


PSYCHOLOGY 

OF 

EDUCATION 



LECTURES ON PSYCHOLOGY 



FOR 



TEACHERS 



BY 

ARTHUR B. MORRILL 

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 

NEW HAVEN, CONN. 



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The Harty-Musch Press, Inc. 

New Haven, Conn. 

1913 



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Copyright 1913 by 
Arthur B. Morrill. 



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NOTE. 

These lectures have been printed from the 
notes of a stenographer who was present when 
they w^ere delivered. In order to preserve the 
effect of the spoken word, they have not been 
rewritten. They were delivered to beginners 
in the art of teaching and have been printed 
to help them. If the lectures receive the atten- 
tion of other readers, the limitations of such a 
course of talks should be taken into consid- 
eration. _ ^^ 

A. B. M. 

New Haven, Conn., 
Nov. 25, 1912. 



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INTRODUCTION. 
The Teacher's Need of Psychology. 

It is not necessary to take up much time in 
defining psychology at the beginning of this 
course of lectures. I will merely try to suggest 
at the outset what the lectures are about. The 
general ideas on this subject needed by the 
teacher are very few. The mistake in the past 
has been that the teachers have dealt with too 
much psycholog}^ Because a great deal of it 
cannot be used in school work. So in the first 
place let me say that I have very few ideas on 
psychology to give instruction upon. 

These ideas, though they are few, are cer- 
tainly important. A teacher has charge of 
forty or fifty children. All of these individuals 
have physical organs we call brains. If she is 
to teach them anything she must deal with 
their brains. The human brain is a machine; 
therefore does it not seem reasonable that she 
should know something about this machine? 
What should we think of a person who is to 
take charge of a steam engine who did not 
know anything about the machine? 

The president of a railroad once asked me, 
^'What is the use of all this psychology?" It 
was the typical question of a practical man, so 
I tried to mf^^t him on his ow^n ground and 



ventured to reply, If you were to engage a man 
to have charge of one of your locomotives, you 
would deem it essential for him to understand 
the operations of the machine. So it is not un- 
reasonable to maintain that those in charge of 
human minds should know something about 
their operations. This body of knowledge of 
mental operations is psychology. But he con- 
tinued, "Have not teachers taught in the past 
without this knowledge of psychology?" 
"Yes," I replied, "Just as truly as your loco- 
motives in the past were successfully run by 
burning wood, but by gaining more knowledge 
you have changed your method and now use 
coal for the sake of efficiency and economy. 

As you will see from the outline I have 
placed on the blackboard, there are three 
phases of the work of teaching, namely, in- 
struction, repetition or drill, and testing or 
recitations. Hearing a recitation is only one 
part of teaching. In many schools the teachers 
fail to do the more important parts of teaching, 
namely the instruction and drill parts. Now 
some truths of psychology are needed in order 
to realize when a teacher ought to instruct, and 
when she ought to drill. Some teachers are 
wasting time because they do not know this. 
I venture to say that when we go out into the 
schools and find a good teacher, she is often 



good because she is an expert in drill. Some- 
times we need to give instruction and some- 
times we need to drill. It depends upon the 
subject we are teaching. Psychology will make 
plain to you when you must drill and when 
you must instruct. 

Now let me give you an illustration to make 
plain what I mean when I say that sometimes 
we should have a minimum amount of knowl- 
edge and a maximum amount of drill, and 
sometimes a maximum amount of knowledge 
and a minimum amount of drill. Take for 
example riding a bicycle. How much knowl- 
edge does it require? It is practice that it is 
needed here. In three minutes a person can 
tell all that is required to know how to ride a 
bicycle. The man who, when asked if he could 
play a violin said that he did not know, he had 
never tried, suggested this truth. The knowl- 
edge part of playing the violin is not very 
great; it is necessary to repeat, — repetition is 
the important feature. 

Another example may make this clear. In 
the past there has been a great waste in teach- 
ing language. Because it was thought that 
people could learn the art of language by the 
knowledge of the science of language. What 
is the principle by which I say a-b-c-d? Whj^ 
do T say c after b, d after e? Is it knowledge 



that directs me? Not at all. It is simply the 
result of practice, — not the result of knowl- 
edge. So in learning any language the truth 
that we must recognize is that in order to ac- 
quire the language we must recognize a cer- 
tain truth in psychology, — we must emphasize 
the repetition and not the knowledge. The 
reason why a teacher in the primary depart- 
ment succeeds in teaching a child to read is 
because she realizes the value of drill, — she 
realizes this simple truth of the human mind. 
We study the Latin language seven or eight 
years. Can we speak it? or can we read it? 
Children study the English language in the 
primary grade and learn to read it in a year or 
two. How do they learn it? By following out 
this truth in psychology. The art of teaching 
must conform to such truths. I give these 
illustrations now simply to bring out this one 
thing, that some knowledge of psychology may 
be helpful to a teacher in determining her 
work. 

A teacher should know something about the 
operations of the mind if she is to care for its 
education in an economical way. Therefore 
our purpose will be to consider some simple 
truths concerning the minds of children. The 
mental processes that a teacher in the common 
schools is concerned with are mainly two — 



knowledge getting and memory. We shall 
attempt in this course to analyze these pro- 
cesses. We shall be led to consider habit and 
reflex action and to point out how closely 
related they are to memory. Attention will be 
dealt with not as a process but as a condition 
of mind action necessary for economical educa- 
tion. We shall consider briefly the higher 
intellectual operations, such as reason, abstrac- 
tion, etc., although the teacher of the common 
school is not much concerned with these 
processes. 

What does psychology say about knowledge 
getting? It says that after the human brain 
has had a certain impression under the in- 
fluence of the surroundings, and has been 
affected by it, the mind gets a mental image, 
and then without that environment the human 
brain can repeat that action. 

Repetition is a condition of one of the great 
laws of the universe. We see this in changes 
of all animal life from the sea anemone, and 
the jelly fish to the higher forms of life. 

When I talk about this power of the human 
brain to do over again what it has done before 
I am talking about what people call memory 
or habit or reflex action. 

If you should ask me what 1 saw in the 
northwestern part of Connecticut yesterday I 



10 



should have to repeat some of the impressions 
I received. I should repeat the images which 
I formed yesterday. This is memory. When a 
person does something while he is talking, like 
taking hold of a button, you say it is habit. 
Habit in one respect is the same as memory, a 
repetition of what has been done before, only 
it is more persistent. 

You teachers of gymnastics* are training 
boys and girls to walk in a certain way. It 
must become unconscious walking to be grace- 
ful. It is so in dancing; just so far as there is 
any thinking it is awkward and ungraceful. 
In this the person must pass from memory to 
habit. This is the power of brain material to 
repeat its action. 

I ^hall assume as the unit of knowledge, the 
mental image for the sake of definiteness in our 
line of thought. This name has proved helpful 
in common experience although it may not 
satisfy the ultimate analysis of metaphysics. 

Expounders of psychology seem to differ 
mainly in their nomenclature and each is justi- 
fied to the extent to which he is helpful and 
clear. Therefore I shall take the liberty of 
selecting my starting point. The mental image 
can be recognized as a definite part of the 

*Teachers from the New Haven Normal School of 
Gymnastics were part of the audience. This explains re- 
peated references to gymnastics. 



II 



mental experience of every one. There are 
other ideas of an abstract nature which of 
course cannot be thought of as images. But 
they must be derived from something, as ''to 
abstract'' means to take away. Therefore our 
unit will serve as the source of other ideas of 
our mental content. All language in its history 
has been so associated with material things 
that it is difficult to divest words of their 
connotation Avhen applying them to immaterial 
thoughts. 

I shall also use the terms that are associated 
with brain action largely because in this way, 
I think I can be more definite. 

In studying the mind we study the brain 
because mind action is accompanied by brain 
action. If a person in dealing with brain, im- 
plies that mind action and brain action are the 
same because they accompany each other he is 
misleading. The difference between mind ac- 
tion and brain action is so great that we cannot 
comprehend it.* I am going to consider the 
part the human mind plays, therefore the part 
the human nervous system takes in these 
operations of mind. 

*"Can we think of the subjective and objective activities 
as the same? Can the oscillation of a molecule be repre- 
sented in consciousness side by side with a (psychic) 
shock and the two be recognized as one? No effort enables 
us to assimilate them. That a unit of feeling has nothing 



12 



in common wilh a unit of motion becomes more than ever 
manifest when we bring the two into juxtaposition."— 
Spencer. 

"But supposing we get so far as to be able to prove that 
the irritation of a particular fragment of cerebral substance 
gives rise to a particular state of consciousness, the reason 
for the connection between the molecular disturbance and 
the psychical phenomenon appears to be out of reach not 
only of our means of investigation but even of our powers 
of conception." — Huxley. 

In order that a teacher may instruct econom- 
ically she must realize what the parts of knowl- 
edge are. In days gone by we used to depend 
too much on books. What was the danger in 
this? It was not that the child learned the 
contents of the book word for word. The 
children used to learn the words instead of the 
ideas. The teacher did not realize the signifi- 
cance of knowing what the nature and sources 
of knowledge are. 

In considering any mental image, as that of 
an orange, for example, we shall find that it is 
made up of color, form, surface and other parts 
which are sensations derived from the source 
in the environment. This must be the mode of 
the teacher's analysis of knowledge getting, in 
order that she may understand the conditions 
of profitable instruction. I shall try to show 
you how the mind gets all its sensations which 
being put together produce ideas. 



13 



Therefore the two phases of the subject to be 
considered are the human brain and its en- 
vironment. In order to understand the environ- 
ment in this connection we must think of it as 
made up especially of light, sound and resist- 
ing matter. We must think of light and sound 
as modes of motion capable of affecting the 
brain, thus producing light and sound 
sensations. 

We must also think of the brain as capable 
of acting in response to its environment. A 
clear idea of action is necessary in order that 
we may not be misled by the common expres- 
sions in regard to the mind. We often hear 
such expressions as * ' Put ideas into the head, ' ' 
"Cram the mind Avith knowledge," as if the 
brain were merely a receiving agent. An illus- 
tration with a piano forte may bring out this 
meaning. We could not imderstand such an 
expression as "putting tunes into the piano." 
We know that the only way to get effects from 
that instrument is to produce action in it. The 
performer as part of the environment, strikes 
the keys, and thus makes the wires inside of 
the instrument act. So the only way in which 
brain results can be effected is by making the 
brain act. So we shall have occasion to use 
this idea of action in studying the relation of 
the human brain to its environment. 



14 



11. 

KNOWLEDGE GETTING. 

At the last lecture reference was made to the 
two general functions of the human brain. 
When there are things present in the environ- 
ment the brain responds to them, and it also 
can repeat its actions, even when the things 
that at first were concerned in producing those 
actions are not present in the environment. 
We call that first act getting knowledge; we 
commonly call that second act remembering, or 
memory. Let me caution you about this. 1 
am taking a very simple view of this subject. 
Do not infer that I mean to imply that these 
are the only functions of the human brain or 
the human mind. They are only two very 
important functions. 

Knowledge getting is the process we shall 
deal with this morning. Let us take up a com- 
mon kind of knowledge, and see if it is not 
composed of images, and then let us see 
if the images are not composed of sensa- 
tions. I say common kind of knowledge 
because there are other varieties of knowl- 
edge in connection with which, as I said 
at the last lecture, it is not quite so apparent 
that the image is the unit, but I may say that 
knowledge depends upon the image. In order 



15 



to realize that this is true let us take for an 
illustration any individual when he is a child. 
Think of his knowledge. Suppose we could 
begin with the knowledge getting of an infant. 
It is very difficult for us to tell where to begin. 
1 remember a quotation that has been used in 
this connection: 

''Who can tell what a baby thinks, 
Who can follow^ the gossamer links 
By which the manikin feels its way 
Out from the shores of the great unknown 
Into the light of day? 
What does he think of his mother 's eyes ? 
What does he think of his mother's hair? 
What of the cradle top that flies 
Backward and forward through the air?" 

This expresses the difficulty in analyzing a 
child's mind. Certainly thinking here refers 
to having ideas, — it refers to knowledge 
getting. The baby certainly gets images of his 
mother's eyes, of her hair, and of the cradle 
top. His first knowledge is gained in that way. 
He has images of the furniture, the chair, the 
table, and when he looks out of the window 
his knowledge is made up of images of trees, 
dogs, horses, and men. 

Now the child gets beyond his immediate 
environment. He may go to a large city when 
he gets older. He gets more knowledge. He 



16 



sees large buildings, he sees more people and 
more things. Now I am giving these facts to 
make plain to you that as you follow the 
growth of an individual's mind you will see 
that it consists in getting these images that are 
furnished by his surroundings. We must study 
knowledge in this way. 

Let us see how a child's knowledge is ex- 
tended still further. Now he reads. What 
does he derive from reading? He gets an ex- 
perience with images. He reads the story of 
Little Red Riding Hood. He has revived in 
his mind an image of the girl, Little Red Riding 
Hood, an image of the woods, of the wolf, of 
the grandmother's house. He sees a series of 
mental pictures. His knowledge consists, you 
see, in his experience of forming mental 
pictures. These are his ideas. Before I go on 
I w^ant to call your attention to one feature of 
knowledge getting by reading. We do not get 
any new parts of images. The printed page 
arouses images that have been formed before, 
putting them together in a certain way. If a 
child has never seen a wolf, or a picture of a 
wolf, his idea of a wolf is very indefinite. We 
have to tell him a wolf is like a dog. 

The book is simply a compilation of ink 
marks. You look at those ink marks and if you 
have associated with them ideas of some kind 



17 



that you have gained from actual experience 
with the sources of ideas, then that book means 
something to you. The child sees the combina- 
tion that makes up the Red Riding Hood story, 
he sees things, that he has seen before, put 
together in a new sequence. The moment we 
use some word with which the child has had 
no sensory experience then his knowledge is 
blank at that place. 

I will say something to you about writers so 
as to make this aspect plain. When we read 
the books that Dickens wrote we know what 
Dickens knew. Dickens has pictured for us 
scenes that he has had experience with, — 
scenes in the streets and allej^s of London, in 
the Court of Chancery, in the old curiousity 
shop, and the mail coach that went in and out 
of London. Where did Dickens get these 
pictures? Xot from any inner consciousness 
let me tell you. He got them from living in 
London, and having experience with all the 
different phases of London life. 

Dickens himself said, ''My imagination 
would never have served me as it has, but for 
the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, 
daily, toiling, drudging attention." 

Scott wrote of Scottish scenery, the high- 
lands of Scotland, especially the lake scenery. 
What was Scott's preparation? It was image 



18 



getting. Scott was constantly in the midst of 
these scenes, and was impressed with the 
Avoods, the lakes, and the shrubbery of Scot- 
land. When he went to the ruinfe of an old 
abbey he would take notes to help him revive 
impressions he had received. Scott's genius 
consisted in grouping these impressions — he 
was a genius in his combinations. 

You have never seen any picture of which 
you have not seen the parts before. The parts 
are all reproductions of some things that you 
have seen, but the originality consists in 
putting them together. Take Raphael and 
Michael Angelo. Their paintings are wonder- 
ful in composition, and sometimes difficult to 
understand, but the parts are all familiar to 
us. The point is this, that imagery is the im- 
portant part of common knowledge, and that 
this kind of knowledge is the kind that is 
utilized on every hand by the individual as he 
is adjusted to his environment, and by the 
writer when he revives the environment by 
writing books. You see what a prominent 
part in knowledge getting this phase implies. 
So when a teacher is concerned with knowl- 
edge this is what she must deal with. 

Now the process of knowledge getting in- 
cludes two parts as I have already suggested. 
It includes the thing outside the individual 



19 



and the ner^^e parts, or the nerve machinery. 

To illustrate what I mean by these two 
phases let us take the image of a flower, — of a 
rose. Now in order that a person may get an 
idea of a rose there must be the thing in the 
environment, then there must be the nerve 
machinery. My image of the rose will be 
largely a visual image, rather than a sound 
image or a taste image. It will be largely made 
up of the sensation of sight. Let us see what 
the rose, the thing in the environment, has to 
do with knowledge getting. Light strikes the 
surface of this rose and is reflected. It then 
strikes the eye which is the end of the optic 
nerve, and nerve impulses pass to the brain 
center where the mental image is formed. We 
must have light and the rose must reflect the 
light or we cannot have the mental image. The 
teacher must realize that the source of a visual 
image must at first be a thing in the environ- 
ment. She must not think that because she is 
dealing with a book that she has the essential 
source of knowledge. Then the thing for the 
teacher to do is to be sure to provide for the 
thing in the environment. Our mental image 
of the rose is mainly made up of the effects 
of this reflected light. It is also includes an 
odor, but you realize how faint the odor part of 
the rose is. I shall speak of this at another 
time. 



30 



As I have said, a large part of our ideas is 
made up of the visual. It is necessary to study 
this in order to realize why it is so. I am going 
to take up the nerve machinery concerned with 
the visual part of the image. First there is the 
eye, and second there is the nerve connection, a 
collection of nerve fibers like white threads, 
that pass to the interior of the head and 
terminate in what we call the brain center. 
These are the parts we must take into consid- 
eration in order to realize how ideas are 
formed. The eye has a subsidiary part in the 
actual process of forming visual images, it is 
simply an instrument. We do not see merely 
with our eyes. The eye is one of the means of 
seeing, but people can see without the eye, — 
they can see when the eyes are closed. So the 
eye is only an accessory in this process of image 
making. 

1 am going to take up the brain center and 
show what it has to do with image making, 
especially with the visual image. The center 
of the brain is that which is immediately con- 
cerned with the visual image. The eye and the 
nerve passing from the eye up to the upper 
part of the head simply help in this process. I 
want you to think of the eye-ball as a helper 
rather than as an agent immediately concerned 
with image making. Now in order to make 



21 



that plain to you I will take up one or two 
illustrations. 

Let us take the matter of dreams. A dream 
is a sequence or collection of mental images. 
The person is asleep, his eyes are closed, he is 
in the dark, yet he sees persons, he sees things. 
He has plenty of mental images. How can this 
be possible unless the nerve centers can act 
over again as they have done before. 

Let us take for another illustration the effect 
of drugs. A person will take a certain kind of 
a drug into his stomach. The blood takes 
material from it up to the brain, where it is 
brought into contact with the nerve centers 
and there is a series of sights. De Quincy put 
himself under the influence of opium and after- 
wards wrote those sketches, "The Confessions 
of an Opium-Eater. " The substance stirs up 
the nerve centers, and produces the accom- 
panying mental act. 

This is true also of disease. Take a person 
afflicted with fever. The blood in this diseased 
states goes up to the brain, and the nerve cen- 
ters are influenced, and made to act, not by 
anything before the eyes, but by this diseased 
and inflamed condition of the tissues. The per- 
son just as truly sees things as if the sources 
were before his eye. 

Some years ago I had the interesting experi- 



22 



ence of addressing the inmates of an Insane 
Asylum. There were six hundred people with 
unsound minds before me. They could not con- 
trol their minds because their brains were af- 
fected. Their minds were affected because 
mind action accompanies brain action. Some 
of them were constantly laughing. I asked the 
man in charge what I had said to make them 
laugh. He said they were laughing at their 
hallucinations, not at what I was saying. One 
woman said ' ' Jane, will you keep still ? ' ' There 
was no ''Jane" near her, but she was address- 
ing a "Jane" that existed in her mind. The 
next morning I looked out of the window and 
there I saw a man Avho was delivering a speech 
in a very dignified way. "Who is that?" I 
asked. "Oh that is a man who goes out there 
and speaks every morning, * ' was the reply. 

The parts of that man's brain concerned 
with visual images acted, and he just as truly 
saw people as if they really were there. So 
hallucination is a very decided instance of this 
image forming. We have all had experience 
with this. We have all had the hallucination of 
hearing. This matter of seeing stars is not 
always a delusion. If you strike the head the 
concussion may stir up the nervous machinery, 
and by that concussion the brain will be af- 
fected, and visual flashes will be produced. 



23 



When we have images formed we have a 
phase of the imagination. We formerly used 
the word ''imagination" as applied to fancy, to 
something unusual, but today we find that all 
processes of image making are processes of the 
imagination. Some men have it in a more pro- 
nounced way than others. Morphy used to 
play seven or eight games of chess blind- 
folded. Since then men have played as many 
as twenty games. Their testimony was thai 
they could see the chess-board, and the chess- 
men just as plainly as if the board was be- 
fore their eyes. Another man after seeing 
one of Rubens 's great paintings went home 
and reproduced it, so that it was almost im- 
possible to distinguish the copy from the 
original. Mozart when he was fourteen years 
old heard the "Miserere of Allegri" at the 
Sistine Chapel. His father, going into his room 
one night, found that he had written the score 
of the music. He did that by his wonderful 
power of musical imagination. 

I want to make plain to you how important 
these sensations of the human brain are ; there- 
fore we shall have to take up these processes 
of image forming a little more in detail. 



III. 

NERVE MACHINERY. 

We will proceed now to study the eyeball as 
part of the machinery concerned in forming 
visual images. The eyeball increases the effect 
of light upon the nerve. That is its special 
part. Therefore you see that it is not so 
intimately connected with the mental product, 
that we call the visual part, as the nerve center 
that I tried to talk about at the last lecture. 
The part that the eyeball performs is similar 
to that of your eye-glasses, or of a microscope. 
Your eye-glasses are additional eyes put be- 
yond the end of the optic nerve for the purpose 
of increasing the effect of light, that is, for the 
purpose of making that part of the environ- 
ment more effective on the nervous machinery. 
The microscope is an additional eye placed be- 
yond the optic nerve, just as the eyeball is 
placed at the end of the optic nerve, for the 
purpose of making light from certain objects 
of the environment more effective in the work 
of the eye accompanying visual images. This 
comes into my mind now, and I cannot refrain 
from mentioning it. Have you ever observed 
that when you touch the hairs that are at the 
end of a cat's nose she will shake her headV 
Have you noticed how sensitive the cat is when 



you do this? The cat's whiskers may be re- 
garded as levers extending from the nerves. 
They may be called intensifiers of the effects 
of the environment. The eyeball may be re- 
garded in the same sense as additional ma- 
chinery for the purpose of intensifying the 
effect of the environment. It does this by 
bringing the rays of light together, and by 
limiting the effects of the different rays of 
light. Let me explain to you these two ways. 
In the first place how does the eyeball in- 
crease the effect of light by bringing the rays 
of light together ? I will call your attention to 
certain parts of the eyeball that we must take 
into consideration in this connection. 1 shall 
not give you names because I want you to con- 
centrate your attention on the parts, and on 
their functions. I shall not attempt, in my 
analysis of the eye, to mention all of its parts. 
I am concerned with the parts that will help 
us in their relation to the mental product. 

The eye is a spheroidal box that may be 
compared to a camera. Secondly, there are 
certain media, that is, certain transparent parts 
through which the light can go. When I say 
transparent I mean that they will allow the 
light to pass through very freel3^ The third 
part of the eye is the end of the nerve con- 
nection, the end of the optic nerve. The optic 



26 



nerve enters this spheroidal box at the back 
part. Observe again how much this is like the 
camera. You put into the camera a film and 
some chemicals that are responsive to light. 1 
want to call your attention to the lens, this 
double, convex lens, that is situated in the 
front part of the eye. By the diagram you 
recognize that I have represented the object 
a b, from which rays of light are passing, either 
emanating as from the candle flame, or re- 
flected as in the case of other objects. The 
rays of light that are reflected from this object 
fall upon the double convex lens, which has 
the power of bringing these rays of light to- 
gether. Thus all the rays of light that leave a 
are brought together again at c. Now this is 
the way the lens affects rays of light. 

Don't you see that the eyeball is an instru- 
ment for making hundreds of rays of light fall 
on a particular spot of the optic nerve, and in 
that way the eye serves to make the light more 
effective in stimulating the optic nerve than if 
only one ray of light reached that spot. So in 
in this sense by bringing rays of light together 
it is an intensifj^er of the light effects of things 
in the environment. It seems to me that the 
diagram ought to bring this out. 

I want to call your attention now to the end 
of the nerve. I have said the nerve is made up 



37 



of thousands of small fibers packed together 
side by side, like the fibers of a string. These 
fibers are spread out and form a network in- 
side of the eyeball. These fibers are furnished 
with terminations that are like little rods and 
cones. They are shaped like rods and cones, 
and are therefore so-called. So think of the 
ends of the nerve as being terminated by these 
minute forms. The light strikes the ends of 
these rods and cones. It has been estimated 
that the rods are about 1-350 of an inch in 
length, and about 1-1400 of an inch in thick- 
ness. The cones are a little shorter and a little 
thicker. They are not quite so numerous. Now 
what do they signify as parts of this machinery 
with reference to this mental process of seeing? 
If each of these rods is a separate termina- 
tion, and involves a separate part of the mental 
image don't you see how minutely definite is 
the provision for the imagery? Don't you see 
how small the part of the environment may 
be, — how small may be a wave of light to pro- 
duce on the brain an effect different from that 
of its neighboring part? Therefore don't you 
see how definite the results of seeing may be? 

Now in order to bring this out let me com- 
pare some parts of the visual image with other 
sensations, for example the sensation of taste. 
Try to see if you can recall tastes. See if you 



28 



can recall the taste of almond and the taste of 
vanilla, and realize where the one begins, and 
the other leaves oft'. Suppose you take two 
different substances into the mouth. In the 
process of eating it passes to the place v^here 
the nerve machinery concerned with taste 
image is located. Are the places of separation 
very definite? Can you distinguish definitely 
the taste of the one and the taste of the other? 
Now take the case of the eye. Try to recall an 
image of a collection of colors. Don't you 
realize how definitely you can separate one 
color from another? Take a group of figures 
upon a carpet or upon a wall paper and recall 
how definite is youv revival of the image of 
each contribution of color. The analysis of the 
machinery makes plain to us that so far as we 
have the nervous machinery elaborated and 
perfected the psychical results will be elab- 
orated and definite. 

The teacher must know what parts of ideas 
are clear and in what respect they effectively 
contribute to the intelligence of the human 
mind. As we study the liuman being more, we 
realize that it has been practice of the in- 
dividual that has resulted in the development 
of this part of the human body that we call 
the eye. The individual's optic nerve in the 
process of evolution has constantly been bom- 



29 



barded by waves of light in this experience we 
call seeing. He has not had so much experi- 
ence in tasting and smelling, and this may be 
the reason why these senses are not so highly 
developed. We find that the smelling sense of 
the dog forms a very large part of his intelli- 
gence, because the dog has always responded 
to his environment in this way. 

I will now take up the subject of the tactual 
parts. I have said that while the visual part 
of the image is important it is not the only 
part, and I will proceed now to take up another 
part which is almost as important as the visual, 
though it does not seem so to us, as the visual 
is so much more vivid and definite. 

If we refer again to the rose we used as an 
illustration we find that our image of it is 
made up largely of the visual, and very faintly 
of the odor part, but how conspicuously of the 
surface of the petals, the way they bend or 
yield to pressure, the hardness of the stem, and 
the general shape of the flower. All of these 
features enter into our idea of a rose, and when 
we say we know a rose our image of it includes 
all of these as well as the visual portion. 
Therefore our image of the rose is a composite 
made up of different parts produced by the 
environment acting upon the different parts of 
the nerve machinery. 



The tactual parts are the effects from con- 
tact and muscular action. When we use the 
word ''touch" to designate this part of sense 
experience there is danger of inferring that we 
mean mere contact. We mean not only this 
effect, but also that of muscular action. 

Muscles are made of this protoplasm that has 
the wonderful power of contractility, this in- 
scrutable power of lengthening and shortening. 
When we refer to muscular action we refer 
to that special form of change that we call 
muscular movement. Now this is attended by 
tactual sensation. So when we refer to the 
tactual parts we refer to the effects both of 
mere contact and of movements of the body. 
The nerve machinery concerned with the tact- 
ual parts are those nerves that come dowii 
to the outside of the body, and the centers 
from which they come. T Avill not deal wifh 
the centers now, but will speak of these fibers 
that come down and whose ends are imbedded 
in the skin and the muscles. So that when the 
skin comes in contact with something of the 
environment we may have a part of the mental 
image Avhich we call the tactual. 

Those parts of our ideas that are concerned 
with size, form, surface, consistency, are the 
parts of our ideas gained through this tactual 
machinel'^^ Pressure, distance, motion, and 



31 



temperature are all the results of contact of 
the environment with the tactual nerves. Let 
me give you an illustration of this. What do I 
mean when I say that this wood is hard? Why 
simply that cohesion holds it together, and I 
have the feeling of resistance when I touch this 
part of the environment with my hand. If 1 
put my hand into vv^ater I do not have the ex- 
perience of resistance, because the parts are 
not held together as the parts of the wood 
were. 

I am trying to emphasize again that in all 
this process of knowledge getting we have to 
take into consideration the effect of the en- 
vironment upon the nerve machinery. I want 
to call attention to the fact that the person 
must think of the environment not only in 
terms of light, but also in terms of resistance. 
Don't you see how important it is therefore 
that science work should be a part of our 
educational system in order that we may be 
able to study even the truths of psychology. 

The visual parts are so vivid that they over- 
shadow the tactual parts, and it has only been 
by careful experiment and observation in 
science that the students of mind have been 
enlightened on this point. 

I refer to one instance that you have prob- 
ably read about. It is given in almost all text- 



32 



books of psychology. Cheselden, an Englisb 
surgeon, operated upon a boy twelve or f':^ur- 
teen years old, who was afflicted with a catar- 
act and had come to the surgeon for relief. 
Cheselden operated so that the light could pass ■ 
through, and the boy regained his sight. The 
testimony of the boy was that he could not 
determine shape. He could not tell the differ- 
ence betv/een a square and a cube. He had 
difficulty in telling the difference between a 
cat and a dog. At one time he is said to have 
passed his hand over the cat's back, and to 
have said, "I shall know you after this, puss." 
He had to get the experience of visual effects, 
through the tactual effects that he had had 
all his life. We do not realize how much of 
these light and shade effects we have gained 
by the environment coming in contact with the 
skin, or by moving through surrounding 
objects. 

We find that the tactual experience has 
played a very important part in the process of 
image getting. It is interesting to know that 
the Avhole animal creation began its response 
to its environment in this way, so T think we 
are justified in saying that the tactual sense is 
the primitive sense, and a fundamental means 
of intelligence. 



83 



IV. 
NERVE MACHINERY. 

As in the case of the visual sensations so in 
the tactua,! sensations the action of the brain 
center is of special importance in that it is im- 
mediately concerned in the realization of these 
senses, that is, we do not feel with the ends of 
the fingers in the sense that the feeling is 
located in the ends of the fingers. The feeling 
is dependent upon the immediate action of the 
brain center. I brought this out by illustra- 
tions in the case of the visual. In common 
experience this is not so apparent with the 
tactual sensation, but a number of illustrations 
show that the feeling is dependent primarily 
upon the action of the center in the brain. 

I will give one illustration. In the case of 
amputation this truth is brought out. If a per- 
son's arm is amputated at the elbow it is com- 
monly observed that the person imagines that 
he has pain in the ends of his fingers when he 
really has no fingers. It is the repeated testi- 
mony of surgeons and patients that they locate 
the feeling in the part of the limb that has 
been removed. You see the sensation cannot 
be located in the part of the body that has been 
entirely removed, therefore it must be located 
in the brain centers. Surgeons explain this by 



M 



referring to the anatomy of the nerve fibers. 
The nerves terminating in the elbow have re- 
peatedly transmitted nervous impulses from 
the ends of the fingers to the brain, so now they 
transmit impulses as if from the fingers, and 
the mind centers refer these sensations to the 
source from which they have habitually come. 
So if there are no fingers, and the brain centers 
locate the feeling in the fingers, it must be the 
work of the brain centers, and not the work of 
any nerves in the fingers. People say that for 
some time after they have lost part of a limb 
they have a feeling of pressure on the remain- 
ing part of the limb. This emphasizes the fact 
then that the nerve center is the important 
part of the machinery in the case of this sensa- 
tion as in others. 

The tactual machinery varies also in its 
power of discrimination as well as the visual 
machinery. I will not attempt to analyze this, 
I will merely allude to it. Experiments have 
been made showing that different parts of the 
skin being terminations of the nerves, have 
different powers of responding to the stimuli. 
A pair of dividers may be used to illustrate 
this. The ends of the dividers can be separated 
as far as two inches and applied to the back 
before two stimuli are realized. They can be 
separated a little more than an inch on the 



35 



back of the hand to distinguish between two 
stimuli. On the fingers they may be separated 
8-100 of an inch, and on the tongue only 4-100 
of an inch. In different parts of the exterior of 
the body to which the tactual nerves come we 
have different powers of responding to the 
stimuli. I V7ill not dwell upon this now, but I 
simply say that this is very suggestive of the 
efficacy of practice in developing the different 
parts of the skin. Thus the tongue has been 
constantly touching parts of the mouth, and we 
have gained a great deal of knowledge of the 
interior of the mouth from this constant tactual 
experience. The individual has also been con- 
stantly using his fingers in responding to his 
environment. 

Now I want to call attention to the associa- 
tion of the visual parts and the tactual parts 
in making up the images that we use in com- 
mon knowledge. Those illustrations that I 
gave, notably the one that I designated as 
Cheselden's boy, brought out this fact. The 
reason that Cheselden's boy had difficulty was 
because he had not associated his tactual ex- 
perience with the visual experience. I want to 
emphasize this idea of association. We begin 
with it here. We shall find that this idea of 
association is a very profitable one in inter- 
preting mental actions. We shall have occa- 



sion to use it on every hand. We encounter 
it here in our efforts to determine how our 
ideas are made up. 

Association. 

We find that the tactual experience and the 
visual experience all through existence have 
been constantly practiced together. I call your 
attention to one aspect of this. We say we 
determine distance by means of light, but we 
use the sensation of sight, that we get from 
light, as a sign of what we have gained from 
the tactual. We have so practiced the visual 
and tactual experiences together that when we 
have a certain visual experience it serves as a 
symbol to arouse the tactual experience that 
we have gained by actual contact with the 
environment. We use certain sensations as 
signs of others, and these signs help to revive 
other sensations. 

Touch and Education. 
Now we will consider the educational value 
of that part of knowledge that we get through 
the tactual machinery. At the last lecture I 
commenced to speak of the fact that the lower 
animals are largely dependent upon the tactual 
sense. By lower animals I refer not to such as 
the cat and dog, but to the sea-anemone, the 
jelly-fish, the sea-urchins, and to the clam and 



37 



oyster with which you are familiar. These 
animals are very simple in their structure, and 
they have not the apparatus with which to 
respond to light and sound, although some of 
these, the anatomist thinks, have a rudi- 
mentary structure that seems to be responsive 
to light. The sea-anemone will wave its ten- 
tacles in the water until some foreign substance 
touches it, when it contracts. This is respond- 
ing to the environment through the tactual. 
So we find that it is a primitive or fundamental 
sense in this respect. If we believe in evolu- 
tion, has not the human race had much experi- 
ence with the tactual or touch sense? In the 
process of getting visual images the rays of 
light fall on a particular part of the optic nerve 
and stimulate it by touching it. When air 
vibrates in a certain way the vibrating matter 
touches the end of the auditory nerve. Here 
we have contact even in the case of sound. So 
these phases of sensation are different ways of 
touching the nervous system. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer calls attention to the 
fact that the lower animals depend largely for 
their intelligence upon contact with the en- 
vironment. If you have ever offered an ele- 
phant a peanut you have noticed that he 
depends largely upon his trunk in his investiga- 
gation. The point that Mr. Spencer makes is 



38 



that he has gained much of his intelligence 
through this tactual sensation. If you will 
recall your observations of the parrot you will 
remember that the parrot investigates his 
environment largely through touch. He uses 
his beak, he uses his tongue — he is the only 
bird that has a tongue— he uses his claws in 
feeling around. He is about the only bird that 
grasps his food with his claws and brings it up 
to his mouth. Here is a bird that is very in- 
telligent, and he depends largely upon the 
tactual for his knowledge. 

Animals that have feet with separate toes 
are generally more intelligent than animals 
with only one toe. Mr. Spencer calls attention 
to the fact that an animal with five toes can 
deal with more than one part of an object at 
once. So we see that animals use the organs 
of touch very extensively. The cat's common 
way of finding out things is to put out her 
paw and touch the things. Even in the case of 
the horse that has only one toe the tendency is 
to find out things through the tactual sense. If 
you go near him, and he wants to investigate 
you, he uses his lips. In this way he tries to 
get acquainted with things outside of himself. 
What is the educational value of this sense? 
As we review the experiences of childhood we 
see that the child is constantly reaching out 



39 



toward his environment by means of Ms hands. 
He begins to get a knowledge of things in this 
way. A child will reach out for a light a num- 
ber of feet away, as though he thought it was 
near. Therefore a knowledge of the distant 
light, or that the light is distant, depends upon 
his having had tactual experience with it. A 
child cannot always hold his hand out in a 
straight line. He has to have considerable ex- 
perience to know^ how it feels to do this. A 
child in the primary school learns to put a 
mark where he sees he ought to put it, but he 
must first have a tactual experience to know 
how it feels to do this. 

The principal part of the knowledge in 
gymnastic exercises is gained through the 
tactual sense. A person may get a visual image 
of how a club is swung, but it is not until he 
knows how it feels to swing a club that he 
knows how to do it. 

Right through childhood we have to depend 
upon the knowledge gained by this tactual ex- 
perience in order to get certain results. If a 
child is to learn what a pound weight is his 
knowledge must be gained by the feeling of 
resistance he has when he holds it in his hand. 
So the teacher must be sure to realize how 
much depends upon the tactual experience, and 
she must not expect the individual's knowledge 



40 



to be complete and accurate witiiout this 
experience. 

We have a number of experiences in adult 
life that depend upon the tactual sense. The 
workman gains his knowledge largely through 
this sense. He takes a chisel and he determines 
whether he uses the tool right by the feeling he 
has. When he uses the chisel he determines 
whether he is taking off a large or small shav- 
ing by the way it feels to do it. Men know 
what they are doing with tools by virtue of this 
sense of touch, whether we are thinking of a 
carpenter's tools, of a machinist's tools, or of a 
sewing needle. In the use of all such tools we 
have to depend upon the resistance of matter to 
get some of our knowledge. 

I once heard of a woman whose sensory 
nerves in her arms were paralyzed and useless. 
She used to hold her baby with her arm, but in 
order to know she was holding the baby, she 
had to look down and see. 

When we think of musical instruments we 
realize that the performer depends largely 
upon the feeling resulting from the motion of 
his hands. The performer on the piano forte 
depends upon the feeling to know whether or 
not he is striking the right keys. How true this 
is also of the violinist, and of all players upon 
stringed instruments. They have to depend 



41 



upon the sense of touch mainly to know if they 
are doing that which is right, for their eyes 
are directed toward the score. One of the most 
remarkable examples was the ease of blind 
Tom, a colored man, who used to play the most 
difficult pieces on the piano forte. 

Take the case of Helen Keller, one of the 
most remarkable exhibitions of the accomplish- 
ments of the intellect in responding to the 
environment through the sense of touch. She 
cannot see, she is deaf, she has only the tactual 
sense, and yet you have only to read her 
biography to know how intelligent she is, and 
how she can interpret her surroundings. 

Imagination. 

We will now consider the imagination. It 
has commonly been thought that the imagina- 
tion is a faculty of the mind. The common 
impression has been that if we wish to recall 
anything we call into service the agent, 
memory, and if we wish to picture something 
particularly fanciful we employ that hand 
maid of the mind, the imagination. 

The modern psychologists says that the mind 
is not possessed of different faculties as though 
they w^re all different parts belonging to the 
mind just as we regard the hands, arms, and 
legs as belonging to the body. 



42 



The imagination then, as 1 shall say of 
memory and reason, should be regarded as a 
process. We ought to think of it in this way. 
It is a process of forming images. 

Let us take two instances, and 1 will ask you 
if it is reasonable to call one instance a case of 
the imagination, and refuse to say the same 
about the other. I will first refer to an ad- 
venture that I myself once had. I will merely 
suggest a few incidents of an all night trip in 
a small sailboat. I sailed out from a Maine 
harbor through the ship channel and out on the 
ocean. My course was such that I can recall 
the small lighthouse on the end of a stone 
breakwater that I passed. On the other side 
was an old octagonal fort with its granite 
walls. Beyond was an island with its green 
slopes and rocky shore and the white spray of 
the waves breaking on the ledges. I can now 
see the blue water of the ocean extending far 
out to the horizon ; the shore with its coves and 
beaches and the cottages high above the dash- 
ing weaves. These images are sufficient for the 
purpose of my illustration. 

Now let us refer to our experience in reading 
any part of Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe, as for ex- 
ample the description of the shipwreck. We 
see Crusoe swimming from the wreck, strug- 
gling to reach the shore, his impressions of the 



43 



island and his first sleep in a tree, his awaken- 
ing in the morning and his sight of the wreck 
on the rocks, then his return to the ship and 
rescuing the many things that he needed. 

Now why should we call one mental process 
imagination and refuse to recognize the other 
as the same kind of a process? Were not both 
the same kind of mental operation, that of 
forming images ? One may have been true, and 
the other may not have been true, but the pro- 
cesses were essentially the same. 

The man who w^rites words, and makes us 
revive images in this way, is original in the 
sense that his combinations are new. You have 
heard a great deal about the "creative power" 
of the human mind in works of the imagination, 
in stories, and in poetry. This creative power 
consists simply in putting things together. 

This brings us to idealism. The idealist in 
art is a person who selects the best parts that 
he has gained from things in the environment, 
and produces a combination that is new in that 
those parts have never been together in that 
way before. The sense in which we use the 
word "ideal" to praise anything, or express 
that it is of high order, depends upon the selec- 
tion on the part of the artist. 

You remember a woman once said when she 
saw Turner's great painting of a wonderful, 



44 



gorgeous sunset, ''Whoever saw such a sun- 
set?'' But Turner said, ''Madam, wouldn't 
you like to see such a sunset ? ' ' 

So in Victor Hugo's ''Storj^ of Jean Val- 
jean" you might ask, ''Whoever saw a human 
being like the bishop?" But Victor Hugo 
v/ould say, "Wouldn't you like to see such a 
human being? " He selected the best parts of 
various human characteristics, and putting 
them together produced an ideal character, — 
one that we would like to see. 

The Greek artists excelled in sculpture. As 
a result of their training the Greeks were well 
developed, and the artist constantly saw their 
partially exposed bodies, and taking the parts 
of various human forms, and putting them 
together, he produced perfect human forms by 
his combination. 



45 



V. 



OTHER PARTS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

I shall not go any further in the process of 
analyzing mental images. We have proceeded 
far enough to realize that the units of knowl- 
edge may be designated as images, that these 
images may be thought of as compounds of 
sensations, so far as we can think of a 
psychical process as a compound. I have tried 
to point this out by considering two of the im- 
portant sensations that enter into images. I 
might deal with sound, and emphasize the fact 
that there are sound images as truly as there 
are visual, and that sound as a sensation is 
sometimes associated with other sensations. I 
might point out to you that the sensations of 
tasting and smelling enter, to a certain extent, 
into ideas, but it would be interesting to note 
that their part is a very faint part, and that 
their faintness seems to be proportionate to the 
use that the human individual, at least, makes 
of these sensations in his intellectual opera- 
tions. He does not practice these two senses so 
much in his intelligence as he does the others; 
therefore according to the law of practice, the 
law of the survival of the fittest, thev seem to 



46 



some extent to be dropped out of the process 
of knowledge getting. 

I hope that I have said enough about this 
knowledge process to make plain to you that in 
all of our educational work we must be sure to 
have these images. If we provide for the 
getting of this concrete part of knowledge, 
whatever other parts there are, will be derived 
from it. Of course we have other kinds of 
ideas as I suggested at a former lecture. We 
have ideas that are derived from these images 
or from parts of them, that we call abstract 
ideas. These ideas are abstracted or taken from 
mental images. We have ideas of relation be- 
sides ideas of things. We have ideas that may 
be designated as general ideas, we have ideas 
of action, of things changing and acting, and 
so on. 

But this is what I want to emphasize, that 
if we have vivid images of things, all these 
other kinds of ideas can certainly be derived 
from them, and the production of these other 
kinds of ideas will certainly depend upon the 
realization of the concrete idea. 

Thinking. 

So we may proceed, then, to the next note 
which I have placed on the blackboard, in 
which I throw out this suggestion, that clear 
images are essential to clear thinking. Now 



47 



you may ask what 1 mean by thinking? We 
have not analyzed thinking under this term yet. 
Some phychologists exalt thinking into a fac- 
ulty, as if there were, as I said about the imag- 
ination, an entity, a something, whose peculiar 
function is to think. It seems to me a very vague 
way to analyze thinking in these terms. Think- 
ing involves a succession. A succession of what? 
Why a succession of these images or ideas that 
I have been talking about. When people are 
thinking they have a train of ideas. Now of 
course there are many different kinds of think- 
ing, but let us be sure to keep in mind that 
form of thought expressed by the word suc- 
cession. In order that the succession may be 
clear the terms must be clear. Just think how 
people who have much thinking to do depend 
upon that. The lawyer in trying a case first 
secures his facts or ideas of evidence. Then 
he proceeds to put these facts into certain 
sequences so that he will get other facts, ideas, 
judgments, or convictions, call them anything 
you please. 

Take the work of a doctor. He goes to his 
patient, and the first and most important thing 
he does is to get his ideas, his images. He does 
it by this process that I have been emphasizing, 
— by using his environment, by observing the 
patient, by examination, by diagnosis. He does 



48 



it by using his senses. I might go on and con- 
sider a business man. His wisdom, what is 
called business sense, has been largely the re- 
sult of the process of dealing with facts that 
he has gained from experience with things in 
his environment, by his long experience with 
life. I might take up any activity in life that 
results in what we call intelligence, and point 
out that the important factor is this unit that 
we call the image, and the important process 
is the sensory process. 

Those who emphasize as a purpose in educa- 
tion, the function of ''learning to think" as 
they express it, seem to fail to apprehend what 
thinking really is. They seem to imply that 
thinking is a special intellectual operation. 
There is no reason for differentiating this 
process from the unceasing mental sequences 
of wakeful existence ; from the ' ' stream of con- 
sciousness" as it has been expressed. Isn't it 
better to emphasize the importance of acquir- 
ing profitable knowledge to think about? The 
trouble is, the individual does not reflect upon 
what those, who complain, want him to think 
about. Education should be concerned with 
the best knowledge. This necessitates com- 
paring educational values and determining 
what knowledge is of the most worth for 
modern life. If thoughts are aroused that ap- 



49 



peal to one as worth while he will reflect upon 
them. The apparent worthlessness of much in 
prescribed education is what influences the 
learner to prefer to think about other things. 
Those who maintain that there is too little 
thinking, would better consider the importance 
of presenting in a convincing way something 
that undeniably pertains to the welfare of the 
individual and society, and he will stimulate 
thinking on the part of the learner. Let a 
person be persuaded that a subject is of real 
worth and he will think about it. T shall speak 
of this again in connection with attention. 

Therefore^ the teacher must realize that she 
has to deal with intelligence. We msiy exalt 
the teacher's work by saying she must teach 
the child to think, but he must have something 
worth thinking about. We may say the 
teacher's work is to build character, but there 
must be something upon which to build char- 
acter. Whenever a writer has attempted to 
arouse the emotions he has done so by means 
of producing images. 

I cannot refrain from emphasizing another 
point of view in this conection. You have heard 
it said that we don't teach rules now. Take the 
case of arithmetic. We teach rules now 
as much as we ever did. How does a teacher 
teach a rule today? Take the process of addi- 

50 



tion, or the process of multiplication, or any 
other process of ciphering. She goes to the 
blackboard and performs the operation. She 
shows how she does it just as she would if ^^he 
were going to teach any other art. She shows 
the way, and the way is the rule. We art- 
teaching the rule just as truly as we ever did, 
but we appeal to the senses instead of giving 
written words to study. We exhibit the action, 
just as we would exhibit the action in any 
other art, — we are observing this economical 
way of getting knowledge. It is by varying 
the mode of teaching the rule that the common 
school of today is distinguished. It is doing its 
work in a more economical way than formerly. 
When the child sees the instructor act, what- 
ever the art may be, whether it is ciphering or 
gymnastics, the child gets a mental image, and 
the teacher must realize that she must produce 
a vivid image on the part of the learner. In 
the work of the gymnasium the first thing you 
have to consider is the instruction. This in- 
struction consists in doing something by which 
the pupils will get a clear idea of what is to 
be done. Repetition is a very important phase 
of the work, but we must first have a very 
clear idea of that which we wish to repeat. 
The coach of an athletic team brings that out. 
He has learned to instruct very carefully. If 



51 



you go out on the field you will see that he 
does not merely tell but he shows how a thing 
is to be done. 

Now I said that thinking involves sueession. 
I mean by succession putting ideas after one 
another. If we take the commonest kind of 
thinking, that of a child, we shall see that his 
thinking consists in having his ideas follow 
one another, logically, as, for example, tho 
child learns that fire is hot. This consists in 
his first having an idea of fire, and then an idea 
of the fire burning him. He learns that a dog 
bites by getting an idea of the dog, and the 
action of the dog biting. So even in higher 
forms of thought the essential thing is a suc- 
cession of ideas. 

Law of Intelligence. 

This leads me to the law of intelligence, 
which helps us to realize w^hat we mean when 
we say that these ideas in thinking succeed one 
another according to a certain order. The 
order of succession is referred to in this law. 
This law also helps us to realize what we mean 
by good thinking, ordinary thinking, or poor 
thinking. *We have it expressed in this formula, 
the coherence or association of images with one 
another, corresponds to, or depends upon the 
persistence of the association of the parts in 
the environment. Some of our associations, 

•Spencer 



52 



then, are fortuitous, because our ideas corre- 
spond to things that happen to be together by 
chance; some are properly associated in suc- 
cession or thought, because they correspond to 
a certain uniform order of things in the en- 
vironment; some necessarily cohere, because 
of the unvarying association of the things in 
the environment that produce those ideas. 
This is founded upon that great principle we 
learn from evolution. The way of expressing 
this law, according to evolution, is that the 
inner adjustment of ideas is proportionate to 
the relation between things or events in the 
environment. Now I am going to give you one 
or two illustrations to bring out the importance 
of this law. I will not attempt here to define 
education, as such definitions are generally in- 
adequate, but I will venture to state that the 
best education prepares one to respond to the 
best in his surroundings, for his own welfare 
and the welfare of society. 

Let us take some of the necessary associa- 
tions of ideas. When I say necessary I mean 
an association that no individual can help mak- 
ing. Now let me give you this illustration. 
You have a mental image of a whole thing, then 
you have a mental image of a part, now you 
•have an idea that the whole is greater than the 
part. Can you have any other succession of 



53 



these ideas? You can not help having those 
ideas in that succession. I am referring to 
ideas, not words. It is very easy to make a 
sentence, and say a part is greater than a 
whole. This is what teachers allow children 
to do very commonly, — repeat words without 
taking pains to have ideas go with the words. 

I take the following illustration from mathe- 
matics, because the necessary forms of thought 
are used in mathematics so generally. Things 
equal to the same thing are equal to each 
other. We cannot put ideas of that suc- 
cession together in any other way. We 
can think of this, that every effect has a 
cause. Can we think in any other way? This 
is what I mean when I say necessary sequences. 
Now as to the application of this law of think- 
ing, it implies this, that the thinking being has 
responded to things in his environment that 
have ever been related in a certain way. He 
has never been in relation to a part greater 
than a whole, but his incessant practice has 
been with a whole greater than a part. There- 
fore the persistency of his thinking is propor- 
tionate to the persistent association of these 
sources of his ideas. Take the experience of a 
common individual. The nature of his intelli- 
gence will depend upon the persistency of the 
parts of the environment as they have been 
associated. 



54 



The child has been related to the fire, and 
he learns that fire burns. Why? Because his 
experience has been concerned with this se- 
quence. He learns that a dog bites in the same 
way. 

Take the idea of the rose. The reason why we 
associated the visual with the tactual sensa- 
tions was because they have always been asso- 
ciated. Why do we associate leaves with the 
tree? Because these two parts have been so 
associated in our experience. So the per- 
sistency of thought depends upon the per- 
sistency of the association of things in the 
environment. All through the history of the 
human race as well as of the human individual 
this has been the law of knowledge. 

We recognize this in education, and we try 
to produce a true association by putting things 
together according to their true relations. All 
of our science work is for this purpose. I said 
that the difference between good thinking and 
poor thinking is expressed by the way in which 
ideas are associated. When a person says, "I 
saw the moon over my left shoulder, I shall 
have bad luck," he is indulging in poor think- 
ing, because there is no relation between seeing 
the moon over the left shoulder, and having 
bad luck. Primitive man used to think in this 



55 



way. When, at the time of an eclipse, the 
Indians were made to think that darkness was 
caused by their bad treatment of the white 
men, that was wrong thinking. 

Now in science we use apparatus, we make 
experiments, in order to make plain certain 
sequences, and to make ideas follow one an- 
other just as events follow one another. Take 
the case of chemistry. If we take one color- 
less gas, oxygen, and another colorless gas, 
hydrogen, and put them together and apply 
heat, a change takes places, and from the 
chemical union of these two gases, we get 
water. We have a great many such experi- 
ments to make it easy to put ideas together in 
their true sequence. So education in chemistry 
consists in having events follow one another, 
and in having ideas follow in a corresponding 
way. 

There is no study more effective in develop- 
ing true thinking than science. The person has 
to think truly because his ideas follow one 
another in the actual sequence of events. 

The difference between reading history and 
studying history is that in studying history we 
try to select the changes that follow one an- 
other according to a certain sequence. We 
realize that if we have certain events in the ac- 
tions of men, certain other events follow. 



56 



Whenever we have a sequence of thought 
that seems to be contrary to our experience we 
are inclined to doubt. We may tell a person 
that if we have two men with a distance be- 
tween them of one hundred miles, and that if 
the first man speaks the second man can hear 
him, the person may say that is ridiculous. 
Why ? Simply because this may be contrary to 
his experience. But if we bring him to the 
telephone he has to think that way. We may 
take a cylindrical machine and speak to it. We 
try it after a while, and it will talk back. The 
person may say he does not believe this, be- 
cause his ideas have never corresponded to 
such events. His thinking this will depend 
upon his having this event take place in his 
own experience. 

1 have come now to the second part of the 
action of the brain, namely, repetition. I have 
said that the brain, and therefore the mind, is 
capable of acting when the environment is 
present, and capable of repeating its action 
without the environment. 

Now there are different kinds of action. 
There is reflex or automatic action, then 
memory, habit and instinct. They are essen- 
tially the same process in that they involve 
repeated action. They differ in that some of 
them are more persistent tendencies to act over 



57 



again. I am going to analyze these different 
kinds of action. I will first take up reflex ac- 
tion, as this is a prototype of all the others. If 
we get an idea of reflex action it will be a guide 
to help us know what we mean when we say 
that habit, memory, and instinct are different 
phases of repetition. 

I shall begin v/ith reflex action next time. 



58 



VI. 

REFLEX ACTION. 

We come now to the second general part 
of the subject that I announced at the outset 
of these lectures, repetition of activity on, 
the part of the mind, and on the part of the 
nervous machinery. Repetition of what? 
Repetition either of movement or of ideas. 
The mind can repeat these processes that we 
have been concerned in analyzing under the 
general subject of knowledge getting. If the 
mind could not repeat, how helpless would be 
our subsequent condition. We assume in all 
educational processes, that the being we are 
concerned with can do over again what we are 
giving instruction upon. In that light we 
realize how important is this whole subject of 
repetition. I will try to make this more ob- 
vious as I proceed with the analysis. 

I would like to have you think of this process 
of repetition in the different aspects I have 
suggested in the note on the blackboard. The 
different phases are designated by different 
names. We have what we call reflex action, or 
automatic action, we have what we sometimes 
give the name habit, sometimes memory, some- 
times instinet- 



59 



Anuil wtUiC ^v» 4ttU IbiliB. Tku* ui wiiifcc [ ««mb 
Mir xaii r»a!fv)rTfif, 'Aan tIii* ««iiftiaikl pttit 

XXL A v^r? 'MiupiM- w I ic wir «M1 liitl •» 

fi*uiZL X ir.-.y tun, • 

*Ui«»t9i 1/ u-ii^ii" • 'ill' - u: ..im '.ill* 4U!UuX.'Ua 

*mf itm 111 httmt ^nz 4» tW Wmt^ m 

^a;«v (jilC -JUit liiiK T'l ift whixi' «*» 



ordinarily call the brain. It represents that 
part corresponding to the human brain. If we 
were to take out the human brain it would 
represent what has been done to this frog. Yet 
this frog is breathing, its heart is beating, it is 
living, in the truest sense of the word, just as 
much as it was six weeks ago before the brain 
was taken out. It has been living six or seven 
weeks without any brain, showing that in some 
of the commonest cases of repetition, it is not 
necessary to have the brain that is concerned 
with some of the higher nervous processes. 
Now I am going to put the frog on this inclined 
board. It may jump, for when you touch it, it 
does what any other frog would do. The frog 
is now a machine repeating the movements it 
has done before, so it illustrates to you that 
without that organ that is ordinarily associated 
with mind processes, such as choice and will, 
processes that approach anything we call con- 
sciousness, without that part of the brain 
machinery here is an animal that can repeat 
many of its activities when stimulated ex- 
ternally. If you were near, you could see it 
breathing, and of course its heart is beating, 
otherwise it could not live. You see it can 
balance itself on this inclined board. It can 
kick and use its legs just as well as any frog. 
By putting my hand on the frog I irritate and 



61 



stimulate it. Just as soon as it is touched it 
tries to do what any frog does, yet it has no 
cerebrum. It is just as much without a brain 
as if it had no head. The only advantage in 
keeping the head on is to feed it, for it would 
not take any food if we did not put it into its 
mouth. 

I put the frog into water, and you see it can 
swim very well. When I touch the frog's skin, 
or when the water bathes the outside of its 
skin, it repeats those muscular acts with the 
same regularity as if it had its whole brain. 
This is the machine movement that we call re- 
flex action, because there is no will action, 
there is no choice of action, and no direction 
from a higher phase of consciousness, whatever 
consciousness the frog may have. Therefore 
you see these movements are just as truly 
associated in a machine-like or automatic way, 
as the raising of a weight would be if you 
should pull the string running over a pulley at 
the other end of which a weight had been 
attached. 

Of course if a frog has anything like con- 
sciousness it must be that it has the same part 
of the nervous machinery necessary for con- 
sciousness that you and I have. This frog has 
not that part of the machinery. It has not, 
therefore, in its experience anything like con- 



62 



scious willing, conscious choice, or conscious 
sensation. 

Now as to the meaning of automatic action 
which this illustration suggests, let me refer 
to the human individual. Many of our acts 
are just as truly automatic, that is, just as truly 
devoid of anything like consciousness, or will, 
on our part as the action of this frog without 
any brain. The beating of the heart, the 
breathing process, the swallowing process, 
sneezing, coughing, are all processes belonging 
to this group of reviving processes that T 
call automatic. If a person is asleep and 
another person pricks his hand with a pin how 
quickly the sleeping person will draw his hand 
away. When he awakes he will testify that he 
was totally unconscious of doing that. How 
many times we have heard of people who have 
got out of bed, dressed themselves, opened 
doors, gone down stairs, and walked around, 
then they have come back, undressed, and have 
gone back to bed again. When they awake in 
the morning they have no realization of what 
they have done. Some people have done diffi- 
cult things while part of their brain was as 
quiescent as if they had no brain. These are 
all sequences of movements done in a machine- 
like way that we call automatic. Many of our 
activities are of that character. I will not go 

63 



any further in this part of the course to de- 
scribe SLny more of these experiences of the 
human being because they will come up under 
another phase of repetition that we call habit. 
The machinery concerned in this process 
must be analyzed a little more in detail in order 
that we may proceed with the subject. The 
nervous system whether of the human being 
or any other animal, from the lowest to the 
highest process, includes tw-o general parts, the 
nerve center and the nerve fiber. Now I am 
going to give you an illustration to show what 
I mean w^hen I say that these two parts are the 
essential parts of any nerve system. Let us 
consider a system that is very simple. If T 
were going to make plain to anybody the parts 
of a machine I would take for an example a 
very simple machine rather than a complicated 
one. So I am going to take one of the lower 
animals, — an animal that is often referred to in 
books on psychology — to bring out this fact. 

As I have dredged in Casco Bay, on the 
coast of Maine, among the animals of interest 
brought up by the dredge has been one we used 
to call the sea-peach. It is oval in shape, about 
the size of an ordinary peach, it has an outside 
covering that is velvety like the peach, and it 
has a bright red coloi- tinting off to white like 
the peach. When it comes out of the water 



64 



with other muddy sea-animals it is very con- 
spicuous on account of its brilliancy, yet it is 
an animal. On the board I have made a rough 
diagram of the animal when it is undisturbed. 
Fig. 1 represents the general shape of the 
animal when it is quiescent, — like that of a 
bag. When it is touched it contracts so that it 
presents the appearance of Fig. 2, — more like 
a small ball. Here we have two actions, — the 
stimulus, and the associated movement. The 
associated movement will invariably follow the 
stimulus. Now when the animal is cut open 
we find one small mass of nerve matter of a 
grajdsh color, with white fibers going up to it, 
and passing from it to the muscles. Here is 
the nerve center and the nerve fibers, and it is 
a simple representation of the nervous system 
of every animal. It is simple because we have 
only one central mass. You see this central 
mass must be the center to which impulses are 
sent, and from which impulses are conducted. 
The thread-like fibers have to do the work of 
conduction. 

In all animals we have these two parts. 
If we refer to the starfish we have five masses 
with fibers, in the clam there are three 
pairs of masses, in the lobster there is a chain 
of masses, in insects the chain has more of these 
parts. When we come to the frog we have 



65 



these same kinds of masses located in the head 
and along the spinal cord. All these masses in 
the ^ frog we can compare to the one mass 
in the sea-peach, only multiplied. Now 
the human being belongs to the same great 
group as the frog, — the back-bone group, and 
the human being has these nerve masses in the 
cranium or skull, at the base of the skull, ex- 
tending down through the spinal cord, and 
some distributed in other parts of the body. 
The fibers go to every part of the skin. 
I want to call your attention to the fact that 
the eye, the tongue, the ear, are all on 
the periphery of the human being, and they are 
all differentiated skin. There are fibers that go 
down from the centers to the muscles, those 
moving parts of the human being, those parts 
made of up of a kind of tissue that has the re- 
markable power of contractility. 

Now I want to be sure to leave this clear in 
your mind, that the human brain is only part 
of the central human nervous system, which 
also includes the chain of masses making up the 
spinal cord. This part which I have here in my 
hand is one of the largest, but it is only one of 
many masses. I Avant to make this general 
aspect of the nerve machinery clear so that the 
multiplicity of the parts will not be confusing 
to you. 



66 



I have here in my hand a human brain. It 
was prepared for me to use in these lectures 
some years ago. It has been hardened so that 
it can be easily handled and examined. It is 
somewhat shrunken, and therefore it is some- 
what smaller than it would be in the human 
head. I show it to you so that you may see 
the parts of the human brain as they really are. 
Here we have the two large masses which we 
call the cerebral hemispheres that occupy the 
upper part. If you examine this brain closely 
you will find that there are a number of smaller 
masses in the lower part. I refrain from giving 
you the names of the parts, as they are not of 
so much value as the ideas, and some of the 
ideas are not of special value to us. It is the 
general anatomy of the brain, that the teacher 
ought to be familiar with. Here is the end of 
the spinal cord that has been cut off, here are 
two large parts, the cerebellum, here is what 
you have learned to call the medulla. If you 
want to know what the names of all these parts 
are you can easily find out by consulting any 
book on anatomy. 

Now I want to take up what we call the cells. 
One of the great truths handed down from the 
nineteenth to the twentieth century is this, that 
all animal tissue as well as vegetable tissue is 
made up of little microscopic parts that we call 



67 



cells. So this nerve tissue of which our brain 
is made is composed of these cells, just as 
in chemistry you have learned that different 
substances are composed of molecules. As the 
molecule is the unit of the physicist, so the cell 
is the unit of the biologist. 

Now these nerve masses are all collections of 
these cells. They differ in shape, and they 
vary in size from 1-300 to 1-3500 of an inch. It 
is difficult to form an exact image of a cell or 
molecule. We form a mental image of a speck 
of dust, and we substitute this for the molecule. 
A common hair of the head, if it is fine, is 
about 1-300 of an inch in diameter. We can 
get an idea of the minuteness of these cells by 
this. If you looked at a piece of brain through 
a microscope you would see distributed 
through it small bodies, some of them star-like, 
and some of them pear-like. The material of 
which the nerve cells are made is a jelly-like 
substance. It is very unstable in its constitu- 
tion. By that I mean that it is very easily de- 
composed, that is, changed in its composition. 
You know substances differ in that respect. 
You would not have to put a piece of glass into 
a refrigerator to keep it because its composi- 
tion is not easily changed, but in summer you 
have to put a piece of meat into a cool place to 
keep it, because it is a kind of matter whose 
composition is changed easily. 



6S 



This nerve matter is made to act. I want you 
to think of action in two ways : think of waste, 
and think of repair. In defining waste perhaps 
the word decomposition would be as clear to 
yon as any other word I could use. I mean 
the material decomposes when I say wastes. 
When I put a stick of wood on my fire the first 
thing that takes place is that the heat de- 
composes the wood. It is reduced to char- 
coal, and finally we have merely ashes left. 
There we have a kind of action, a case of de- 
composition. That wood cannot be used over 
again, it has been wasted, it has been changed, 
and we have to replenish the fire with more 
material. Your chemical training prepares 
you to think according to this requirement of 
mental science. 

Oxygen is so concerned in this action that we 
could not live long without it, — so concerned 
that if we did not have this oxygen our con- 
sciousness would cease immediately. So the 
first thing we must take care of is the physical 
condition of the brain. In order that the brain 
cells may do their work they must have food 
and rest, — a period when they are quiescent, 
when they are not acting so incessantly that 
the waste will far exceed the repair. Don't 
you see how important it is that a person who 



69 



is to have charge of forty or fifty brains should 
realize this? Should she not realize the im- 
portance of this need of oxygen, food and rest? 
The reason we have had such serious results in 
education is that people have ignored these 
three factors of mental activity, 1 do not know 
of any condition in education that should be 
recognized with so much seriousness as the con- 
dition of these brain cells, their need of oxygen, 
their need of food, and their need of rest. 



70 



VII. 

NERVE CHANGES. 

Continuing the subject of repetition, allow 
me to allude again to the two general parts of 
the nervous system concerned in mental acts, 
the nerve centers, and the nerve fibers. Bear 
in mind that the nerve fibers pass from the sur- 
face of the body to these nerve centers, and 
from these nerve centers to the muscles, and to 
other parts of the body. Their function is 
mainly that of conduction. It may be well to 
state here also that these nerve fibers pass from 
center to center, so that all of these central 
masses are connected with one another by a 
great many nerve fibers. 

Now as to the function of the nerve centers 
I will be cautious about being too specific. 
Formerly physiologists venture to state that 
the nerve centers acted in a way peculiar to 
themselves, and different from the action of the 
nerve fibers which is merely that of conduction, 
but observations are making it necessary to 
be cautious about being too specific in re- 
gard to the action of the nerve center. How- 
ever, for us teachers it is sufficient to state that 
these nerve centers are concerned in some way 
with mental acts. Some action takes place in 



71 



these nerve centers. This is all that is neces- 
sary for us to consider in order to realize the 
importance of doing everything possible to 
take care of this part of the machinery. We 
must realize that these centers, concerned as 
they are in activity, need certain indispensable 
conditions, such as the provision of oxygen, 
food, and rest. Now as the blood is concerned 
in carrying oxj^gen and food to these nerve 
centers as well as carrying away waste pro- 
ducts, it is important to realize how neces- 
sary exercise is for a good brain condition, 
because certainly one of the benefits of exercise 
is to hasten the circulation of this carrying; 
agent, which we call blood, and it may be well 
to say here that it is as important to get rid of 
waste or useless products as it is to furnish that 
which is useful to the brain system. Especiallj^ 
as these w^aste substances are now thought to 
be concerned with fatigue. It is important to 
get rid of that which clogs and poisons the 
human system as to provide nourishment. In 
taking care of a fire it is necessary to get rid 
of ashes and clinkers as well as to furnish fresh 
coal. People often make a mistake in this 
respect in taking care of their bodies. They 
often resort to over-feeding, and to the taking 
of drugs. 

Again let me allude to what I was.proeeed- 



72 



ing to say about the composition of the nerve 
cells. I said at the last lecture that the mate- 
rial was very unstable, and easily changed. 
Let me add a little to that. Of course these 
cells are made up of smaller parts, of 
molecules. The molecule of nerve matter con- 
tains many parts. That may be one reason 
why it is so unstable. You can realize that a 
piece of quartz that has only three atoms in the 
molecule is not unstable. The molecule of pro- 
toplasm may contain three or four hundred 
atoms, and you can realize that this is a condi- 
tion of change, of separation. You can under- 
stand that a simple machine like a pair of scis- 
sors is not so likely to be deranged as a sewing 
machine, or a watch, v/hich have a multiplicity 
of parts. 

These molecules are built up, so to speak, 
during the period of rest or sleep. We realize 
that the human mind is more alert at some 
times than at others. We can do almost any- 
thing more easily after a rest than we can when 
we are fatigued. The nerve centers are con- 
cerned in mental activity, and it is important 
for every individual to realize that while thus 
concerned they are being changed, or decom- 
posed. Professor Huxley in order to bring out 
the complex aspect of the molecule in the nerve 
center, and the condition after change, once 



gave this illustration. He referred to building 
a house with cards and pointed out that the 
more cards one used the more unstable the 
house was, and the more ready to tumble down. 
So it is with the composition of this nerve 
matter, it very easily tumbles down to simpler 
products that become waste products. 

This leads me to the law of growth. 1 want 
to state that law in the terms of Dr. Carpenter 
who has put it into a few words. He says the 
nervous system grows to the mode in which it 
is habitually exercised. This is the funda- 
mental process of all your educational work. 
Let me try to make plain what is meant by 
' ' grows to the mode. ' ' It implies the breaking 
down of tissue, and the building up of the 
same. This is what growth means, — waste and 
repair, separation of the parts, and nourish- 
ment. Now the parts of a tissue change, and 
do over again more easily what they were con- 
cerned in doing when they were worn out. This 
is what that law means. So you see if we 
practice any movement habitually, that is, re- 
peatedly, when the tissue is built up again it is 
built up so that it continues to do over again 
that particular act that it was worn out in 
doing. This underlies the work of training 
muscles as well as the work of repeating ideas. 
In this light we can realize what the German 



74 



physiologist meant when he said that we learn 
to skate in summer, and we learn to swim in 
winter. He meant that we have the practice of 
skating in winter, then during the summer 
those nerve centers become quiescent, and are 
repaired, and after this process they can do 
over again better than before what they were 
broken down in doing during the skating sea- 
son. I used to notice at the gymnasium that if 
I rested a day or two I could do things 
better than I could before. It seemed to me 
that during these periods of rest the nerve and 
muscular tissues had a chance to be built up 
again, so that those actions could be done more 
easily after the rest than before. 

Association. 
Now I will hurry on and state another law 
that is equally important, — the law of associa- 
tion. It is this, when one action is performed 
in connection with another action a great many 
times they tend to cohere, or to be associated, 
so that when one term of the sequence is re- 
peated the other term will be repeated. Now 
that implies that there are more terms than 
one, there must be at least two terms with 
which that law is concerned. There may be an 
irritation and a movement, or there may be two 
movements, or one movement and an idea, or 
the terms may be a sign and an idea, or an 



75 



idea and emotion. In the case of the frog one 
of the terms was a stimulus on his skin, and 
the other a movement of the muscles that had 
been repeated whenever there had been a 
stimulus on the skin. These tAvo experiences so 
cohere in the life of a frog that when one is 
repeated the other will be repeated. In the 
ease of movement Vv^e often find that when one 
muscular movement is executed another will 
follow if they have followed in sequence a 
great many times. Talking is referred to that 
law, and in school work writing is also referred 
to that lavv'. In writing each movement of the 
hand is a stimulus to the next movement. This 
is true of words in a language whether it be a 
sequence of intelligible words that express 
sense, or merelj^ a sequence of unintelligible 
words. One muscular movement of the vocal 
organs having been followed b}^ another, when 
one is repeated the other will follow^ as when I 
say a-b-c-d the muscular act in naming a is a 
stimulus to that of naming b. 

Again we have an idea and movement. A 
child has an idea and he jumps up and does 
something. We have a sign and an idea, as 
reading words in a book. We look at the sign 
on a printed page and we have the idea, that is 
associated with that sign, brought into con- 
sciousness. We look at an ink mark of a score 



of music, and if we have associated a certain 
tone or pitch with that mark, that tone w^ill be 
dragged into consciousness when we see that 
sign. These associated actions are so bound 
together according to the universal law of our 
being that if we have one experience we shall 
have the other. You can see how important 
and fundamental this laAv is, and let me saj' 
to you that one reason why there has been so 
much waste in teaching many subjects is that 
teachers have failed to recognize the funda- 
mental character of this law. I will give you 
two illustrations to emphasize this further. 

I have on the board in Fig, 1 a diagram rep- 
resenting a vertical section of what we call the 
upper, and some of the lower centers of the 
human brain. Now let me show you how learn- 
ing to talk is an illustration of this law of asso- 
ciation in which actions become automatic and 
bound together. Let us refer now to a child. 
The child sees an object. The act of seeing 
consists of waves of light being reflected from 
the object, a cat for example, to the eye, then 
nerve impulses are sent through the optic nerve 
to the lower centers of the head, and thence to 
the upper centers, and we have formed there 
a visual image accompanying the action of the 
brain. Now there is also in the environment a 
word spoken. Waves of sound strike the end 



77 



of the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve is 
stimulated, something is sent to the upper part 
of the brain, there is an accompanying action, 
and we have a sound image. The visual and 
sound centers are connected by nerve fibers, 
thus providing for the association of actions. 
Now when these two experiences have been 
repeated together a certain number of times, 
they become so associated that when the sound 
image is brought into consciousness, the visual 
will follow. So if a child hears the name cat 
as often as he sees the object, he will know cat 
when he hears the word. 

I had a very striking instance of this once 
when I was in the town of Brookline, for the 
purpose of giving this lecture. I was walking 
along the side-walk and passed a nurse wheel- 
ing a baby carriage. After I had passed I 
heard the baby say "boAv wow." 1 turned and 
saw the baby pointing to a stone lion at the 
entrance of a large estate. The child had seen 
something like the lion, namely, the dog, and 
he had heard the sound ' ' bow wow, ' ' and when 
in this case he had called up in his mind an 
image like the dog he also had dragged into his 
consciousness the sound '^bow wow" which 
had accompanied the visual image. 

The teacher must fulfill this same law in 
teaching a child to read because it is concerned 



78 



with the same law of association, — the sign 
with the idea, so that every time a child sees 
a word he has brought to his consciousness the 
name, and also the visual image. A teacher 
should get a clear idea of this, and follow it 
out most faithfully. The teacher who teaches 
reading successfully follows out the require- 
ment of that law, and the skilled teacher is one 
who is an artist in drill. 

Habit. 

We come now to the subject, habit, which is 
simply another phase of this repetition, and is 
involved in various activities. Some habits are 
more automatic than others. Some we can 
hardly distinguish from reflex action. We 
generally speak of habit as distinct from reflex 
action in that it is an automatic action, ac- 
quired by the individual. 

Let us take an example of the acquiring of 
a habit. A person learning to play the piano 
forte first looks at the music and gets an image 
of the sign on the staff. The nerve impulses 
from that experience go to certain brain cen- 
ters, and then under the direction of the will 
the centers concerned with movement are made 
to act, then nerve impulses are sent down to 
the muscles, and the fingers strike a certain 
key. He repeats that very deliberately, it is a 
slow process at first, but after a while, after 



79 



much practice, those muscles of the arm and 
finger are made to act so that they will strike 
different keys very rapidly, and just as soon as 
this becomes automatic it is a habit. I want 
to call your attention to the fact that the part 
which is slow, and requires guidance, depends, 
upon memory, until after sufficient practice, 
it becomes automatic, and does not re- 
quire guidance. The performer must be re- 
lieved of the necessity of guiding his move- 
ments, for his mind must be concerned in 
realizing the higher feeling of the composition, 
and in giving it expression. A man once 
counted the movements of a performer on the 
piano, and found that she made 5,595 move- 
ments in four minutes and three seconds. You 
can realize that a person could not think as 
fast as that. 

This automatic phase becomes very im- 
portant to us when we realize how many of 
such actions there must be. 

I have referred to the upper centers and to 
the lower centers of the brain. By lower cen- 
ters the physiologist generally refers to those 
masses below those in the upper part of the 
head. It is believed that when those lower 
centers act there is no associated mental ex- 
perience that we can consider as conscious. So 
in acquiring a habit we must relegate to the 



80 



lower centers as much work as possible. In the 
case of the frog all its acts were performed by 
the lower centers, because the upper centers 
had been taken out. 

We have many amusing instances given to 
show what the lower centers will do. Refer- 
ence has often been made to the soldier who 
was carrying a pail of milk in one hand, and a 
bundle in the other, when some one shouted: 
''Attention!" The muscles that had been ac- 
customed to obeying this command acted, and 
the bundle and the milk had to go. 

I once heard a story of a busines man whose 
upper brain centers were concerned with cer- 
tain matters of business while he was going 
home to dinner. His wife, meeting him at the 
door, told him to hurry as they had company 
waiting for dinner. The man, still thinking of 
business matters, went upstairs. He took off his 
coat, and the lower centers performed the ac- 
tions usually following this act, and when his 
wife came to look for him some time later she 
found him in bed. 

You all have experiences of this kind. You 
will not have to guide yourselves home this 
noon, your lower centers will do that. 

I have repeatedly said to the young ladies 
when they have finished a recitation, ''That is 
sufficient." One time when I was presiding at 



81 



a meeting a man finished his speech and I said, 
''That is sufficient." 

At the close of the teachers ' meeting I often 
have to check mj^self from saying, "Class is 
excused. ' ' 

"When I go home to my father's house I have 
difficulty to refrain from putting my hand into 
my pocket, and taking out a key. In my early 
life I had gone up the steps and taken out a key 
so many times that those two acts had be- 
come by repetition associated. 

It is worth your while to notice how these 
lower centers will do what they are called upon 
to do without any conscious direction. 

This leads me to emphasize the importance of 
this automatic action which we call habit. In 
order to carry on the duties of life it is the law 
that we must relegate to those lower centers as 
much work as possible in order that the upper 
centers may have the energy to do the higher 
things in life. Many of our actions such as 
walking, going up and down stairs, opening 
and shutting doors, dressing and undressing, 
using tools, and many others must be so ac- 
quired that they will need no conscious direc- 
tion whatever. So when we come to school 
work we shall see how much must be relegated 
to the lower centers. 



R2 



vm. * 

HABIT. 

Now I will take up the subject of habit 
where I left it at the last lecture. I was about 
to point out that habit is of special value in 
much of school work. The point of view that 1 
want to emphasize is this, that in many things 
the teacher has to do in the school room her 
aim to a great extent should be habit rather 
than knowledge. We may express their rela- 
tive values by diagram in which we represent* 
knowledge as of limited importance, and prac- 
tice, or that which produces habit, as very 
important. 

Beginnings of Reading, 

I will refer again to reading words, and read- 
ing music, as illustrations of this thought. I 
refer to the beginnings of reading. Of course 
there are two aspects in teaching reading in the 
schools. One we call the beginnings, in which 
we are concerned with associating printed 
words with ideas. The other aspect is con- 
cerned with the content of the reading, in 
getting ideas or emotions. 1 Avant to make 
plain to you what I mean when I say this part 
of psychologly is of special value in teaching 
the beginnings of reading. People have ignored 



83 



this fact, and have talked of the necessity of 
knowing the names of letters. "What do they 
mean by knowing the letters? They mean the 
ability to know the names of the letters. Let 
us test this. Let us take that word cat, that 
has played such a prominent part in education. 
Suppose we follow this prescribed course. 
What is the result? The individual knows 
see-ay-tee, the names of the letters that spell 
the word. What does he know as a result, It 
is preposterous to expect anybody to know cat 
simply by knowing the names of the letters of 
the word. 

Some people emphasize the sound of the 
letters, and this has more of reason on its side, 
but after all in committing to memory, or asso- 
ciating, the sounds of letters we are in danger 
of going a round-about way to teach the be- 
ginnings of reading. When you and I read we 
look at a page, and, to use a common term, 
we have committed its words to memory. When 
we come to a word whose idea we cannot recall 
we hesitate, and have to learn to read that 
word. I believe that those teachers who have 
succeeded best are those who have analyzed 
this special part, that the result to be obtained 
is the association of the visual image of the 
printed word with the sound word or idea, and 
they have realized that this association must 



84 



be automatic. The only way to obtain this re- 
sult is by practice. There is no other way. 
This is the way in which we have all learned to 
read, whether we have learned it by the alpha- 
betical or phonetic method. 

The same is true of reading music. Before I 
proceed to that I will add, that anything in the 
way of phonics, learning the names of letters, 
or learning to spell that can be utilized in at- 
taining this for the main purpose is justifiable, 
so long as the teacher does not exalt it to an 
end. Reading music is also a process of asso- 
ciation. Signs that are seen must be auto- 
matically associated with sounds that are 
heard. Let me point out this, that it is waste- 
ful to attempt to spend too much time in hav- 
ing children learn what a clef is, or what the 
signs of a key are, in the sense that they must 
be put into words, when they ought to be 
seeing, hearing, or sounding the notes. 
Children often surprise us by the progress they 
can make when we take into consideration the 
machinery, their brains, that they must use, 
and pay some heed to the way in which those 
brains must be used in order to attain the end 
we desire. 

The same is true also in regard to writing 
and spelling. Automatic association, that 
phase we call habit, is the end. Therefore that 



85 



course that provides the most practice will be 
the most successful course. 

We now come to language sequences. I have 
purposely used the word sequences here, be- 
cause whatever the language may be it is a 
sequence of words. We put words after one 
another according to best usage. The condi- 
tion of putting words after one another is prac- 
tice, so that the sequences will be habitual, as 
I said in the first lecture. The proper arrange- 
ment of words depends upon arrangement as 
the notes of a melody do. When we sing our 
wills have very little to do in putting the notes 
after one another. The same is true of putting 
words after one another. A person does not 
use corect forms of syntax because he has 
learned rules. So in language, if we aim at the 
art of language, that is, if we aim at speaking 
and writing the language, this principle of 
psychology is of paramount importance. The 
reason that there has been so much waste in 
teaching foreign languages is that the people 
who have been concerned in teaching these lan- 
guages have not recognized these principles of 
psychology. If they aim at reading and speak- 
ing the language, and I cannot imagine any- 
thing else worth aiming at, then the principle 
that should guide them is that of automatic 
association, and the only way of attaining that 



86 



end is incessant practice. We have spent a 
great deal of time in learning syntax and much 
about language, but after years of such study 
we are unable not only to speak the language 
but even to read it. If the best success is ever 
attained in the future in teaching Latin, Greek 
or French and German, it will be accomplished 
by those teachers who have studied in a profit- 
able way the psychology of the minds of those 
whom they are teaching, and who have dis- 
cerned the principles that they must observe. 

The same principle must be observed in arith- 
metic if the end is to be the art side, not the 
science side. We have been taught the science 
side of both language and arithmetic, but so far 
as we dwell upon the science we neglect the art 
side of these subjects. When I refer to cipher- 
ing I mean doing arithmetic, getting results 
with figures. We aim at association that must 
become habitual. Take for example thinking, 
two and three, and having five as a result. This 
must be an automatic process. Learning all 
the combinations that make up the multiplica- 
tion tables consist in associating figures. If we 
have to stop to think, or even to remember, we 
have not proceeded far enough in the work m 
arithmetic. I cannot go any further now in my 
analysis of arithmetic, but this ought to sug- 
gest to you that the arithmetic needed in life is 



87 



the art side of arithmetic which involves 
practice. 

In muscular actions in gymnasium work we 
do not depend upon knowledge, but upon prac- 
tice. Dancing brings this out. How many 
dancing teachers will proceed to analyze the 
waltz, and try to have people know what the 
steps of a waltz are. Have you ever observed 
anyone trying to dance by knowledge? They 
are very conspicuous until they get out of the 
knowledge phase. They are conspicuous be- 
cause they are conscious. Dancing consists in 
making certain movements in sequence accord- 
ing to time. The thing to do is to have a model 
to imitate. After you can make these move- 
ments correspond to certain time by practice 
you have learned to waltz, and you may not 
know what the steps of a waltz are. All gym- 
nastic exercises are based upon this principle. 
You teachers in the gymnasium have an oppor- 
tunity to train children to walk. Walking con- 
sists in making a certain series of movements 
in sequence. Not long ago I saw a brigade of 
twelve or fifteen hundred high school boys in 
a parade, and I saw very few boys in that 
brigade who walked creditably, or carried 
themselves properly. This is very obvious when 
you observe the children of the public schools. 
The only way to train people to a proper car- 



88 



riage or posture is to train the muscles by con- 
stant practice so that easy muscular movements 
will follow one another without any guidance 
whatever. 

Conduct is another part of our school work 
in which habit must be an end. This is es- 
pecially true in two phases of conduct, the 
care of the health, and the civilities of life, that 
is, the deportment, what we often call eti- 
quette. It is not so much knowing that we 
should take care of our health, that we should 
be unwilling to sit in a room where there is un- 
wholesome air, that we should be regular in 
our food habits, and abstain from indigestible 
food, — it is not knowledge that is of the great- 
est importance, it is habit. So many people in 
teaching hygiene fail to realize that. Those 
who teach temperance make the mistake of 
thinking that knowledge makes people tem- 
perate. The people who are temperate do not 
depend upon knowledge, but upon habit. This 
is also true of the civilities. It is not the extent 
to which you tell a child, "This is not polite,*' 
or "You must not do this," that the child is 
well-bred. It is the extent to which the teacher 
makes the child practice over and over again 
the civilities so that he cannot help being 
polite. The person who attempts to be polite 
by rule is just as crude as the person who at- 
tempts to dance by rule. 



89 



You see that I have emphasized the doing 
side of our education. In all parts of our edu- 
cation in which doing is the important element 
practice is necessary. "We learn to do by 
doing." This aphorism is not new, it is as old 
as the human race. I will leave this subject by 
saying again that it is that part of education 
that involves doing in connection with which 
this aphorism, "Learn to do by doing," is the 
important feature. There are other parts of 
our education in which practice and automatic 
action are not the important features. I saw 
this brought out in Harper's Monthly some 
time ago. 

"The worlds in which I live are two, 
The world I am, and the world I do. " 

I have been talking about the world "1 do." 
I will continue this subject of repetition by 
taking up another phase that we call memory. 
The special part of memory is this tendency to 
do over again. It differs from the other phases, 
reflex action, and habit, in that it may be re- 
garded as a weaker tendency to do over again. 
Its power to repeat may be spoken of as 
temporary, for it sometimes subsides, and can- 
not be realized, whereas reflex action and habit 
are more permanent. Memory differs in many 
respects from reflex action, though this is the 



90 



important element. It is unlike habit and re- 
flex action in this respect, that when we have 
memory w^e can locate the event in time, not 
only that, but we can also locate it in space, — 
we know where a certain thing happened. 

I do not propose to analyze here in what 
other respects memory is unlike these other 
processes. I simply want to point out to you 
that memory is not a general faculty in the 
sense in which it has been regarded. Certainly 
people have talked about memory in a way to 
imply that they meant by memory a faculty 
that in a general way does all the reviving or 
repeating. People say they study a certain 
language because it trains the memory. What 
do they mean? That it so trains the memory 
that they can remember anything. So they 
think memory is a general faculty for repeat- 
ing. Now there are as many memories as there 
are different ways of repeating knowledge that 
is gained. I will say that I believe in the teach- 
ing of psychology that brings out that when a 
mental process is repeated, exactly the same 
part of the brain acts over again that was con- 
cerned in acting at first. I wdll not attempt to 
say that these processes can be located in the 
brain too specifically, I will only say that there 
are certain brain areas that do the work. I 
believe that when I see an orange, and after- 



91 



ward remember that orange the two processes 
are the same. When I remember a melody I 
believe that the action of the brain is the same 
as when I first heard the melody. Don't you 
see what a different aspect psychology teaches 
when we consider these two experiences? 
Don't you see how inconsistent it would be to 
say that by studying words we train a general 
memory? If this were so actors ought to have 
prodigious memories, but it has been found 
that this is not the case, though they do gain 
facility in other kinds of word repetition. 

This leads me, in closing, to point out the im- 
portance of memory in all our educational 
work. You often hear memory spoken of in a 
depreciating way, but in all our mental acts we 
must depend upon memory. If a person could 
not repeat today the ideas he has gained in the 
past, think how helpless he would be. I shall 
take up next some of the facts in favor of this 
aspect of memory that psychology teaches us, 
and then review some of the conditions favor- 
ing memory. 



92 



IX. 

MEMORY. 

I wish to repeat, on account of its import- 
ance, a statement in regard to memory that 1 
have already made. It is this, when we re- 
member, the same parts of the brain act over 
again that were concerned in the first action, 
whether it be the act of forming images, or the 
act of producing movement. We can realize 
the significance of the idea that we have 
different memories only on the basis of 
that view, so we may consider that the 
individual has a visual memory, a sound 
memory, or a tactual memory. This is very 
important for the teacher to take into account, 
because in her art of teaching she realizes that 
she has different individuals to deal with, and 
she must give all a chance for utilizing their 
natural endowments, so that if a person by 
inheritance has a good visual memory he ought 
to have a chance to use it, or if he has a good 
sound or tactual memory he ought to have a 
chance to use that also. This is the reason why 
in teaching spelling, although we may never 
have to spell unless we write, we should give 
drill in oral spelling, in hearing the words 
spelled repeatedly, as well as seeing the word, 



93 



or writing the word. In different exercises of 
this kind we are drilling on different kinds of 
memory. 

Now let me give you one or two illustrations 
to make this plainer. People who use the 
microscope sometimes testify that after a pro- 
longed experience of a number of hours with 
the microscope, in looking at objects and re- 
peating the visual images many times, after 
leaving the microscope the visual images still 
persistently recur. The persons continue irre- 
sistibly to see the same objects that they have 
had long experience in observing. The brain 
seems to continue to repeat those visual 
experiences. After sailing on the water for a 
number of hours you have all had the con- 
tinued experience of realizing the wave 
motion of the water after you have come 
ashore, and you have a feeling as though the 
sidewalk were going up and down just as the 
boat did. The brain parts concerned with 
tactual feeling repeat those tactual experiences 
which they have had much practice in for a 
number of hours. If we have attended an 
opera, and have heard a certain tune over and 
over again, we often say, after leaving the 
opera, that we cannot get that melody out of 
our head. The brain centers continue to act. 
Do not these few instances seem to point out 



94 



that the same parts of the brain act over again 
in memory that acted when the influences of 
the environment were present? 

I will give further evidence of this, and will 
consider first the case of injury to the brain. 
The text-books on psychology give a great 
many recorded instances of memory being 
affected by injuries, diseases, and other in- 
fluences. I will call your attention to just one 
or two of these cases, that are very interesting 
in their instructiveness. I can think of one 
case recorded of a man who had spoken the 
Welsh language in his youth. He had been 
away from Wales a number of years, and had 
forgotten his own language, but upon recover- 
ing from the injury of a blow on the head he 
could speak the Welsh language fluently. In 
an accident a man was struck upon the head, 
and upon his recovery he could not recall his 
knowledge of Greek. A lady, after receiving a 
blow on the head, found that she could not 
recall her knowledge of music. Another in- 
stance is that of a gentlemen who fell from his 
horse, struck his head upon some hard object, 
and was so injured that when he recovei^^d he 
could not remember that he had wife and 
children. One of the most striking instances of 
partial loss of memory is that recorded in the 
life of Sir Walter Scott, who suffered a severe 



95 



illness while he was writing one of his books, 
and when he had recovered conld not remem- 
ber the characters and incidents of that book. 

In cases of disease we have phenomena of 
memory that are very instructive on this point. 
Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances 
on record is that of a servant in a German 
family who was taken sick with a fever. She 
was a young woman who could not read or 
write, and yet during the delirium of her sick- 
ness she gave utterances in the various Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew languages. They were so 
consecutive that they were startling, and 
caught the attention of the attending physician, 
who upon tracing out the case, found that the 
young woman had lived for years in the family 
of a clergyman. It was the practice of this 
clergyman to walk in the corridor and repeat 
selections from the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew 
languages, and the brain cells of this poor 
woman had been so bombarded with those 
language sequences that under the unusual 
stimulus of the brain they were repeated. This 
is not a fanciful ease. It has the best authority, 
and has been quoted by many writers on 
psychology on account of its instructiveness. 

Another case of a Welshman is recorded. He 
had forgotten his language because he had not 
spoken it for years, and while having „ a fever 



96 



used his language fluently, but when he re- 
covered he could not remember it. 

I can recall a case that came under my own 
observation. 1 was calling once upon a gentle- 
man who was suffering from a fall from a 
carriage. He had struck his head upon a curb- 
stone, and had been seriously injured. While 
I was in his room a clerk from his business 
house came in, and asked him to sign a paper. 
He signed it, the clerk went out, and we went 
on with out conversation. A number of days 
after the man had convalesced he came to me 
with a worried look, and asked me if he had 
put his name on that check. ' ' My dear sir, you 
certainly did," I replied, ''for I saw you do 
it. ' ' His brain was in such an enfeebled condi- 
tion at that time that it could not repeat the 
action. 

The well-known disease of aphasia is a condi- 
tion in which a person can remember ideas, but 
cannot recall the words for the ideas. 

I have given you these instances that you 
may realize the significance of this idea, that 
when we refer to different memories, we refer 
to different parts of the brain acting over 
again, and if those parts of the brain are af- 
fected, then this power to repeat, which we call 
memory, will be interfered with, and impaired, 
— it may be checked so that we cannot realize 



97 



it for days, or even months. Do not all these 
instances seem to verify the statement that we 
have different memories, and these memories 
depend upon the possibility of the different 
parts of the brain acting over again. 

Aids to Memory. 

Now I come to that part of the subject in 
which I want to point out some of the aids to 
memory. First I shall emphasize the physi- 
ological condition of the brain as an important 
aid. The importance of the physiological 
condition of the brain is brought out by the 
fact that children can remember things better 
than adults. This is so because in a 
child's brain the conditions for repeating are 
more favorable. When you observe that after 
reading some words to a child a number of 
times he can repeat those words, you can 
realize that more of an impression has been 
made upon his brain. Don't you see therefore 
how important this aspect is for the teacher, 
and how important it is that she should see that 
the physiological condition of the child's brain, 
in these respects which I have mentioned, are 
favorable to memory? Important things can 
be given to children to remember, such as 
repeating good selections of poetry or prose, 
seeing good pictures, and learning good music. 



98 



Let me cite to you one illustration of the 
work we are doing in our Model Schools. We 
are teaching geography in the lower grades. 
We are having children look at maps. Why? 
Because they will subsequently need to see and 
to remember these maps. You and I can re- 
member the map of North America, South 
America, Europe, Asia, the Philippine Islands. 
If you cannot, your education has subsided a 
little. This is memory. It depends upon our 
seeing these maps a sufficient number of times 
so that the visual images can be repeated. Now 
the condition of the brain in old age depends 
upon this part that we have designated the 
physiological condition of memory. The other 
day a gentleman told me of an old lady in an 
Eastern town who was ninety years old. She 
could not remember the things she had heard 
the day before, or even the names of her own 
family, but she could spell better than any of 
the children in the village. She was still alert 
in repeating the letters of words she had heard 
almost ninety years ago. During her early life, 
when her brain was in good condition, these 
words as she spelled them had been so im- 
pressed upon her brain, the change had been so 
registered, as the psychologists say, that they 
never were obliterated. When I speak of 
registering change I mean that there has been 



99 



waste and repair, or growth. TMs is true of 
old people in general. They cannot remember 
things they have recently acquired, but the 
memory of former experiences is ever possible. 
I know of a noted man of letters who in old age 
had to depend upon others for remembering 
some of the commonest things. He went to the 
funeral of another literary man whom he 
had known as well as any member of 
his own family. When he looked at the form 
of the man he said, ' ' I cannot recall that man 's 
name, but he had a gentle nature. ' ' So we find 
in old age that the physiological condition of 
the brain is less favorable to memory, and those 
kinds of memories that have been the least 
provided for, are the first that go. 

We notice in our own experience that fatigue 
affects our power to repeat. We know that 
some things Ave cannot remember at night come 
to us in the morning. We have all perhaps had 
the experience of not being able to recall lines 
of poetry which at other times, when we were 
alert and fresh, we could remember. I have 
repeatedly had this fact demonstrated in my 
own experience, that a rest from sleep makes 
the brain more capable of doing over again 
what it has done before. Sometimes in the 
night under unusual stimulus the brain will act 
over again, but it is because there is an unusual 



mo 



stimulus, as sometimes a tired horse under 
whipping will go a little faster. 

Another aid to memory is the well-known 
condition which we call attentive repetition. 
If we wish to be able to repeat anything, we 
must practice, and of course this makes plain to 
the teacher the necessity of drill. It is not 
necessary to dwell upon this phase of helpful- 
ness unless to emphasize this, that teachers 
often fail to realize that drill has been 
neglected, and they often expect children to 
remember things when they have not been 
sufficiently drilled. 

We often hear it said, "That man made an 
off-hand speech without any preparation what- 
ever. ' ' Let me tell you that generally the ideas 
in an extemporaneous speech have been thought 
over and over again. I remember Mr. Beecher 
was in the habit of talking off-hand. On being 
complimented on his sermon being remarkable 
as an extemporaneous effort he replied, ''Why, 
my dear sir, I have been twenty years prepar- 
ing that sermon." He was such a reflective 
man, he had so thought over his subject, that 
his ideas were ready to be expressed. 

The point I want to emphasize is that if you 
want to have ideas to express you must practice 
thinking ideas. I surmise that often in our 



101 



recitations the reason why pupils cannot ex- 
press ideas is because they have not rehearsed 
them enough. In order to have facility in 
realizing a line of thought you must rehearse 
it. I believe this is the main significance of 
reflection. Those people are the most intelli- 
gent people who, from some motive or other, 
usually from interest in the subject, repeat 
over and over again their ideas. Then they 
know the subject, and the reason why people 
do not know is, not because they have not had 
ample chance for instruction, but because they 
have not realized that repetition makes their 
intelligence available, and is the condition for 
memory. 

I will venture to use these two expressions in 
regard to memory, — ready memory, and latent 
memory. These words are convenient for me 
to use at this point. When w^e can readily 
repeat anything I would say that we have a 
ready memory. By latent memory 1 refer to 
those parts of our acquirements that we cannot 
readily revive. They require favorable condi- 
tions, certain association, or some kind of 
stimulus. Now let me illustrate what I mean. 
Many of you have pursued branches of study 
such as those you have followed in the High 
School, and it has been your experience to say, 
''T cannot remember anything, or I cannot re- 



102 



member much, of what I learned in that sub- 
ject," and if you have taken a text-book and 
gone over the subject you have been impressed 
by the fact that you could remember the sub- 
ject far better than you could if you had not 
studied it before. 

A young man told me that once he decided to 
taken a certain examination at the university 
for a prize. It was on the subject of calculus, 
which he had not studied for some time. He 
went over to the college library, looked over 
some examination papers, and found he could 
not answer one of the questions. He took a 
text-book on calculus, and in a few hours went 
over the subject. He afterwards took the 
examination and answered every one of the ten 
questions. In a few hours he was able to fit 
himself so that he could remember what it had 
taken him a year to acquire, so there must have 
been some part of that memory that had not 
been obliterated. 

It is encouraging to know that the intelli- 
gence responds in many ways upon a slightly 
favorable condition. I believe that the word, 
culture, is applicable to this condition. The 
best culture is that intelligence that is made up 
of such parts as can be revived in response to 
the best external influences. Culture depends 
upon the memory condition. It depends upon 



103 



that condition that can be awakened when we 
come into certain relations, and the great ques- 
tion for educators today is what culture is of 
the most worth, and what memories are the 
most worth cultivating. 

If we ask a pianist to play sometimes we 
have heard her say, "I am not in practice, — 
I have not practiced for three weeks, ' ' and we 
excuse her. It is common to excuse people who 
say they have not used their muscles for a few 
weeks, but there are some people who think 
it strange because their brain centers cannot 
revive knowledge with which they have long 
had no practice. Why should we not use the 
same expression with reference to those parts 
of our brain that are concerned in higher 
phases of knowledge namely, ''We are not in 
practice.'' So we must keep our minds in 
practice along those lines which we wish to 
repeat, and we must not think it strange if 
people cannot remember some things they have 
not had recent practice in remembering. 

I often think it is unfair for people to expect 
so much of those who come out of the schools. 
It is interesting to me to see that lawyers, when 
consulted in regard to a law, say, "Leave me 
the facts, and I will look it up, and see what 
the law is in this case." The physician also 
gets the facts of the case, and then looks it up. 



104 



It is quite common to refuse to give the same 
privilege to people who leave the schools. So 
again I say that we should not expect people to 
remember those things that require practice 
in memory, when they have not had this 
practice. 

I will stop here and take up the other aids 
to memory at the next lecture, and I will also 
begin the subject of attention. 



105 



AIDS TO MEMORY. 

1 will continue to speak on the aids to 
memory. The third aid that 1 propose to deal 
with I have desif^nated as the intensity of the 
first impression. We have all had experiences 
that have been remembered without repetition. 
We have all said sornethinj^ like this, — I shall 
never forget that exjjerience, that sight, or that 
sound, — although we may have had only one 
occasion for ac(iuiring the idea. It seems as if, 
on the brain side, that the condition for 
memory in such a case must be that the brain 
action is unusually affected. It seems that the 
change in the brain for some reason or other 
must be greater than usual, and therefore the 
condition for reviving is more favorable than 
under ordinary circumstances. We cannot say 
anything more definite about that condition. 
Such instances are generally associated with 
some feeling, as fear, wonder, curiosity, joy. 
Perhaps the influence of the emotion prolongs 
the change to the extent that it is pronounced, 
that is, it is easily repeated. The fact that 
under some circumstances only one, or at least 
a few experiences are necessary for revival 
makes plain why a teacher should if possible 
make the first exf>erience impressive. This 



106 



truth underlies all objective teaching. The 
teacher is aiming in objective teaching to pro- 
vide for memory. We are doing this in all 
our education. We aim to give instruction so 
that acts may be done over again with as little 
effort as possible. So when a teacher proceeds 
to give instruction on an idea, by bringing the 
environment into the presence ol* the child, by 
making some action or object affect the brain 
directly, she is recognizing this particular truth 
in regard to memory. She is trying to make 
such a change in the brain action that there 
will be as little need of repetition to ensure the 
repetition of the idea as possible. I might 
allude here to this thought that comes into my 
mind, that perhaps this effect in brain action 
is all we produce by repetition. I can think of 
this illustration which we must use cautiously. 
A person with a very strong, pronounced 
stroke can make a deep impression upon some 
hard object with one action, but just as deep 
an impression can be made by repeatedly 
using slight strokes. So the circumstances at- 
tending an idea may be such that the same ef- 
fect will be produced that is otherwise pro- 
duced by repeating less influential acts. 

The next aid to memory that T shall dwell 
upon is that included under the general law of 
association. T have already referred to the law 



107 



of association, and have stated it very care- 
fully. This is the special application to the 
phenomena of memory. In connection with 
memory when ideas are associated by the rela- 
tion of nearness in time or space, or by the 
relation of similarity, then they seem to be 
revived by one another. Whenever we speak 
of association of course we refer to relation. 
You observe in this special case I am specify- 
ing the relation by which mental acts may be 
connected. Let me try to make plain what I 
mean by the association, or the relation, of 
nearness in time or space. I will use as an 
illustration a common experience. When a per- 
son wants to remember an idea he often resorts 
to a simple device, like putting a string on the 
finger. Now the principle involved is this. 
The string is put around the finger at the same 
time that the idea is in consciousness. The 
string will be before the person's eye con- 
stantly, and when he sees the string, according 
to this condition of association in time, the 
same idea is revived that was experienced when 
the string was put on the finger. When a per- 
son uses notes to help him remember ideas that 
he wants to express, just a few marks made at 
the same time that he had those ideas when 
listening to a lecture, or preparing a lecture, 
will enable him to recall those ideas. 



108 



We have many illustrations of the truth of 
this condition of memory. In common life our 
surroundings are constantly reminding us of 
former events, and of former parts of 
our lives. From travel we can pick out 
very striking illustrations of the applica- 
tion of this principle. We may go to a place 
where we have been before, to the sea-shore or 
to some country place, to the home of a relative, 
or to some hotel. We see things that remind 
us of the experiences we had there about that 
time, or near that particular place. It is not 
necessary for me to attempt to give many 
illustrations of that, for you can all recall ex- 
periences of that kind. I will give two illustra- 
tions that are very striking. I have here a 
piece of plaster with paint on it that was put 
there two thousand years ago. This piece of 
plaster w^as taken from the house of Glaucus 
of Pompeii. — the house that has been made so 
famous by Lord Bulwer in his story. ^'The 
Last Days of Pompeii." When a person looks 
at that now. don't you suppose many scenes 
come into his mind that are associated with 
the place from which he took that piece of 
plaster, — the ruins of the place, the rooms of 
the house, the pavement, the picture of the dog, 
the Latin inscription under the picture, and the 
ruins of other places in that city. Just a thing 



109 



like that, by virtue of its association with time 
and place, can make memory possible. 

Here is a piece of black lava. One of my 
family stood on the side of Mt. Vesuvius and 
put a stick down into the running stream of 
lava that was as red and liquid as red hot iron 
coming from a foundry furnace, and took it 
up in a plastic condition, and then saw it cool 
and become hard and black. When the person 
looks at that now, ideas that were associated 
with it are recalled to mind because of the rela- 
tion of nearness in place and time, when it was 
a part of a former experience. 

This is a very general condition of memory. 
It is the basis of all kinds of experiences. All 
memorials are based on this mental truth, that 
when we look at a certain thing we may be able 
to remember events associated with that thing. 
When I go home to Maine I pass by the Bunker 
Hill monument. When I look at that shaft of 
granite extending upward I cannot refrain 
from remembering a number of ideas. Webster, 
in his speech, expressed that law of memory 
when he said, "It is a plain shaft, there is no 
inscription fronting to the rising sun from 
which the future antiquarian shall wipe the 
dust, neither does the rising sun cause tones of 
music to issue from its summit; but at the 
rising of the sun, and at the setting of the sun, 



110 



in the blaze of noon-day, and beneath the 
milder effulgence of lunar light, it looks, it 
speaks, it acts, to the full comprehension of 
every American mind, and to the awakening 
of glowing enthusiasm in every American 
heart." Webster was expressing a broad psy- 
chological principle. You can see how wide- 
extending this special principle favoring 
memory is. I hardly know where to leave this 
subject because it is so large. 

There seems to be an important physical con- 
dition by which the mental states are bound 
together, and by which one mental state drags 
into consciousness another. This is so funda- 
mental that one recent writer has used the 
expression "associative memory," and by this 
widely applicable expression he has ventured 
to designate all mental consciousness. We can 
appreciate that phase of mental action when 
we recall the structure of the human brain. 
Nerve fibers traverse the brain in every direc- 
tion, in this way connecting every part of the 
brain. Does it not seem, so far as we can under- 
stand it, that this is evidence that this is the 
condition of all kinds of thinking? When 
physiologists speak of brain tracts they refer 
to the ways by which nerve energy can be con- 
ducted. And why is it not reasonable to think 
that when two acts of consciousness are pro- 



111 



duced the physical condition may be a passing 
of nervous energy from one part of the brain 
to another in some way 1 

As I sat before a school yesterday and heard 
the children recite some poetry I was intensely 
interested in the different means of expression. 
Some of the children expressed themselves r^ot 
merely by uttered words, but by various con- 
tractions of the muscles of the face, some con- 
tracting the brow, and others contracting other 
parts of the face. On the other hand some of 
the pupils recited without any outward evi- 
dence of intense inward feeling, but uttered the 
words in a calm and reposeful way. With some 
there was more internal feeling than with 
others, and in order to give an outlet for this 
nervous energy the muscles had to contract. 
So we have presented to us in every phase of 
brain action the passing of nervous energy over 
tracts. Therefore does it not seem possible that 
the brain condition of many fibers passing from 
one to another is just the physical condition 
that we should expect would underlie this law 
of association. I mention the brain side be- 
cause you remember I said at the beginning of 
the course that I would constantly refer to 
these psychological truths in the terms of the 
brain, which I believe are the more definite 
terms. 



112 



I cannot take up at length the states of con- 
sciousness that are associated with memory 
acts that I referred to at the beginning of the 
lecture, namely, the state of consciousness by 
which we locate in time and space these 
memory acts. It would perhaps be an interest- 
ing matter to consider and to speculate about, 
but it does not pertain to school teaching inti- 
mately enough to justify my taking the time to 
do so. I can think that perhaps the reason 
why we can locate in time is because there are 
faintly revived with any particular memory act 
other acts intervening between the present and 
the past, and hence we can put the event back 
to a certain time. We can locate in space by 
faintly intervening objects that come between. 
It is interesting to note here why time is long 
to children. Tt is because they revive more 
events than a person does in adult life. Ac- 
cording to the third aid to memory the events 
make more of an impression in a child's experi- 
ence that in an adult's, he remembers more, 
and therefore more intervening acts are re- 
vived in his memory. This is the reason why 
the time seems so long when we are waiting for 
a train. Everything comes into the conscious- 
ness, and we measure the time by the interven- 
ing ideas. As we grow older fewer things 
make a deep impression on us, we forget many 



113 



things, and therefore the year seems shorter. 
The possibility of memory is forgetfnlness. If 
we did not forget, memory would be almost 
impossible, because there are so many things to 
remember that it would be confusing. 

Attention. 

I come now to the subject of attention. In 
regard to attention I want to say very carefully 
at the outset that I shall designate it as a state, 
or as a mode, that is, the word attention, as we 
use it, should be applied not to anything like an 
entity, not to anything as definite as we might 
mean when we say a part of the mind, but to 
the weiy in which the mind acts. I am proceed- 
ing very carefully as this is a very important 
analysis. In the act of attention I think that 
the brain is acting more effectively in one 
particular way than in other ways. Therefore 
that particular state of consciousness that ac- 
companies that particular brain action is more 
prominent. Other parts of consciousness are 
quiescent, they sink into abeyance, while this 
particular part rises to ascendancy. In the 
act of attention in seeing, that part of the brain 
concerned with the visual image is probably 
more alert than other parts, therefore the 
visual image is conspicuous in consciousness. 
When we say that we secure attention we mean 



114 



that we cause the brain to act in a particular 
way rather than in other ways, and therefore 
we make the mind act in that way rather than 
in any other way. This is true whether we 
refer to ideas, or muscular acts. We have at- 
tention in muscular acts when that part of the 
organism is acting that we want to act, and 
when we are doing certain things with our 
muscles, the fact that we are doing those things 
in that way is attention. So you see that by 
attention I refer to the way in which the mind 
acts, and not to any particular faculty of the 
mind. You can see how important this be- 
comes in education, for if you can only make 
the learner's mind act in the way in which 
your mind is acting, then you are educating 
him. You are instructing that individual if 
you can make him have the same ideas that you 
have, or do the same acts that you do, so of 
course the whole art of teaching lies in securing 
attention. 

I want to refer here to what Mr. Herbert 
Spencer says about the different orders of ideas 
which seems to verify this view of attention. 
He says that acts of the same order interfere 
with one another in this matter of attention. 
Take for example the matter of seeing. Seeing 
one thing interferes with seeing other things, 
but sensations of different orders do not 



115 



interfere with one another. We can hear words 
or other sounds such as music, and at the same 
time form visual images, and the sound images 
do not interfere with the visual images, but you 
cannot carry on two sound experiences to- 
gether very well, because one sound experience 
interferes with the attention which you must 
have for the other. You cannot listen to two 
persons talking very advantageously, but you 
can listen to a person talking, and at the same 
time see things. The part concerned with hear- 
ing is somewhat remote from the part con- 
cerned with seeing, therefore we can have the 
two actions at the same time. 

Law of Attention. 

Now the law of attention I shall express in 
this way. There is always some feeling or emo- 
tion associated with that act to which we apply 
the word attention. Think what a universal 
law that is if stated in that way. If you wish 
to secure attention you must always provide 
for the experience of some feeling. The feel- 
ing is always present when you have attention. 
We often designate it by the word interest, but 
by this term w^e always include some phase of 
emotion, or feeling. Interest is that which 
keeps the mind alert. You never have atten- 
tion unless you have interest. When you think 



116 



that some people advocate securing attention 
to things people do not want to pay attention 
to, this seems to be inconsistent, but if you 
analyze such a case you Avill be sure to find 
some feeling connected, though remotely, with 
the act of attention. You cannot think of any 
law more important than this, because in all 
work we must provide for the feeling. After 
awhile the condition of attention you provide 
for is that of automatic association. This, 
in itself, is abnormal attention, and does not 
come under what we are now considering. 

The rule that grows out of that general law 
is this, associate the feeling of pleasure, satis- 
faction, desire, or any other kind of emotion 
with the action, either mental or muscular that 
you aim to produce, and which we call atten- 
tion. The teacher's business in her art is to 
find out what feelings she can use. I have sim- 
ply designated these three to show that there 
are different kinds of feelings, or emotions. T 
do not use the word emotion in the hysterical 
sense, but to distinguish from a class of ex- 
periences that we call intellectual experiences. 
In school work, therefore, if a teacher is 
trained and intelligent, she is constantly trying 
to find out what the feelings are that are asso- 
ciated with her work. Then she can make a 
child do her work. This has been the experi- 



117 



ence of teachers all through the history of 
teaching. The older teachers used to work in 
a way we do not quite approve of today. They 
used to appeal to certain feelings, such as fear, 
but we question as to whether they appealed 
to the right kind of emotions. I will take up 
the subject at this point, and try to show how 
the trained teacher, in her art of teaching, is 
trying to obey this law of attention. 



118 



XI. 

LAW OF ATTENTION 



Let us analyze a little further this law ot 
attention. Let us consider with the help of one 
or two illustrations how far it is true that feel- 
ing is associated with the act to which we 
apply the word attention. I will consider the 
case of a very young child. An infant shows 
us an example of a condition in which there 
is no attention manifested. A young infant 
presents, in a striking way an erratic tendency, 
that is, a tendency to wander from one experi- 
ence to another. When he gets along in life a 
few weeks, suddenly the members of the family 
observe that the baby is paying attention. He 
may be discovered staring fixedly at the bright 
light The fixity of his gaze indicates that he 
is paying attention. As the baby looks at the 
bright light, or the red worsted ball does he not 
seem, by the movements of his hands, by the 
activity of his body, and by his smiling laugh- 
ing expression, to have a pleasurable feel- 
ing attending those visual images? The very 
fact that he is smiling shows that he 
has a feeling of pleasure, and therefor 
he prolongs that experience beyond his usual 
habit. Now if you ask me why having experi- 



119 



ence with a light or a bright color is pleasur- 
able you ask me a question that I cannot 
answer. I do not know that any psychologist 
can answer it. You are asking a question con- 
cerning the mystery of pleasure and pain. 

As the child grows older if a person touches 
his tongue with a stick of candy you have 
noticed how quickly the candy occupies his 
consciousness. If we analyze that, we must 
think that it is the pleasure of taste that is the 
condition of his paying attention to the stick 
of candy. 

So in these two instances it seems that the 
condition of attention is a feeling of pleasure, 
in the one case attending a visual image, and 
in the other case attending a tactual experi- 
ence, and yet, as I said, if you should ask me 
why the taste of something sweet is pleasur- 
able, while the tastes of something bitter is dis- 
argeeable I could not give an ultimate answer. 

Let us follow that child. He has grown to br 
a boy about fourteen years old. At home his 
mother asks him to do an errand of some kind, 
or to shovel the snow from the back yard so 
that the clothes can be hung out. You can 
imagine how some boys move in such a case. 
Suppose that boy is asked to go down stairs 
and bring up a hod of coal. You have noticed 
that he shows the same reluctance and in- 



120 



difference. Now if you follow that boy in the 
afternoon out on the foot-ball field notice the 
difference in his way of acting. See how hard 
he will work, how he will endure rough 
handling, players will fall upon him, kick 
him, and bruise him, and yet he will con- 
tinue this work with pertinacity of purpose. 
You ask the question, "Why does he do that 
with so much avidity whereas he did another 
piece of work with so much reluctance?" The 
answer will be— Because he likes to play foot- 
ball. There is something associated with the 
work of playing foot-ball that makes the in 
dividual pay attention to it. 

I am simply dealing with the fact. I am try- 
ing to point out that there is an agreeable 
feeling associated with one experience and not 
with the other. It is not because it is easy 
to play foot-ball, for it is harder work than 
shoveling snow, but the difference is that there 
is a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction asso- 
ciated with one kind of work, and not with the 
other. So you see all through the experience 
of the individual when we have that state 
which we call attention you may be sure that 
you can find associated with the act a feeling 
of pleasure, satisfaction, desire, or of some 
other kind. In analyzing these simple in- 
stances I have tried to point out that there 



121 



must be a feeling concerned; therefore a 
teacher must be sure to study her case and find 
out what feeling may be utilized to secure cer- 
tain things in education. 

This is true in all phases of life. When 
people do things with avidity, it is generally 
because there is some motive associated with 
the doing. Remember when I say doing, I am 
referring to an attentive act. We may not be 
able to readily perceive the feeling, but this 
is no reason for its not being there any more 
than our failure to see why there is a feeling 
of pleasure or satisfaction associated with the 
hard work of the game. 

You remember the story of the man who was 
working in a sewer, and some one said to him, 
"You have to work hard, my poor man, don't 
you ? " " Yes, ' ' the workman replied, ' ' but you 
ought to go over there and see those people 
play lawn tennis." There was a feeling of 
satisfaction in playing tennis, but the poor 
laborer did not perceive it. I remember when I 
was in college whenever I looked from my 
dormitory window at the opposite building, I 
used to see a man engaged in looking through 
a microscope. Even when we were to have 
some athletic game or entertainment I would 
find him still looking through that microscope. 
I could not understand how that man could 



122 



I 



persist in paying attention to the microscope 
when we were so absorbed in an anticipated 
game on the athletic field, but it was simply 
because I had had no experience in that way, 
and did not know the fascination of looking 
through a microscope. There was a feeling asso- 
ciated with that particular act. So when we 
see people applying themselves assiduously to 
some line of w^ork, you may be sure that the 
manifestation of attention is due to some mo 
tive or some feeling associated with the line 
of work they are following. There we have a 
solution of the most important phase of educa- 
tion, whether it be the case of a child at school 
or that of an adult. 

Now let me call your attention to what is 
called "seat work." Teachers realize today 
better than they did formerly that when they 
are in the presence of children they can make 
them like, or want to do certain work, and 
therefore secure attention by personal in- 
fluence; but it is important that when the 
teacher sends the children from her presence, 
even if it be only to the seat, she should provide 
for attention. A teacher may be concerned 
with the beginnings of reading. She wants a 
child to look at a printed sign and associate 
ideas with the signs. This is not attractive 
work, but she arranges some devices with 



123 



which there is associated certain satisfaction. 
She gives a child pieces of cardboard on which 
there are words, and some on which there are 
pictures, and the child puts these together; or 
she gives the child lines of poetry to be put 
together to make a stanza. 

In the case of arithmetic work, in teaching 
the facts of addition, subtraction, and multipli- 
cation the work consists in repeating over and 
over again some very dry and uninteresting 
experiences, but if a teacher can arrange some 
device in the way of having figures on cards 
that can be put together she is making the 
child do something that he likes to do, and at 
the same time learn facts in ciphering. Childrefi 
like to do this, and in this way they do work 
that under other circumstances would be 
drudgery. 

I come again to what we call object teaching. 
In almost all cases where we can use our eyes 
in looking at the thing itself, there is more 
satisfaction than in merely hearing or reading 
words about it. I will not attempt to analyze 
why this is so, unless to say, perhaps, that it is 
because we get a more vivid idea in this way. 
So when a teacher makes an experiment illus- 
trating the lesson, she generally has the atten- 
tion of the class. She may use a picture, or 
something of interest like a piece of the house 



124 



where a certain literary man lived, or a piece 
of a ship that was engaged in a certain fight, 
or a segment of some rock concerned in the 
lesson, — just looking at something of this kind 
is generally attended with satisfaction. In all 
objective work the teacher in her instruction 
influences the child to have the same ideas that 
she has by using objects, and thereby produc- 
ing the feeling necessary for attention. 

In the case of silent reading the teacher 
makes it a part of her work to influence pupils 
to read certain books. The teacher does not 
have to do much to make children read a story, 
because the story in itself contains this element 
of interest. Here I might point out that in a 
story the writer has observed the law of atten- 
tion in that he has recognized that change is 
generally a condition of interest, and therefore 
of attention. This is true also in physical ex- 
periences. 

So the story-writer takes .advantage of this 
condition of interest. When it is desirable 
to influence children to read something that in 
itself does not contain the element of interest 
for the child, then it is the business of the 
teacher to associate with the reading in some 
way a feeling of desire, pleasure, or satisfac- 
tion in getting the idea that the writer has 
embodied in that book, — it may be an essay, a 



125 



sketch, some kinds of poetry, or some kinds of 
fiction. Sometimes it is necessary for the 
teacher to associate with the works of Scott., 
Goldsmith, or Burns what the writers have 
done, and what feeling is associated with the 
imagery that they portray. The teacher should 
do something to make the child in reading such 
books, have the same feeling that the adult has. 
I am inclined to think that teachers often think 
all that is necessary is to tell a child that such a 
book is a standard book, that people read such 
books, and they think they have accomplished 
their purpose when they have done that. 

Writers and lecturers on literature have 
realized that it is very important to obey this 
law of attention, and any teacher or lecturer 
who does not make us want to read certain 
things that we would otherwise not want to 
read fails to accomplish his purpose. The chief 
business of an instructor should be to make 
other people do work, that is, pay attention to 
work, which is worth attention. 

In teaching the beginnings of number we use 
objects like blocks. By means of these blocks 
we teach the simple facts of figuring, not that 
we could not teach these facts without the 
blocks, but because the blocks are generally 
attention devices. 



126 



In the kindergarten we observe this law of 
attention. The kindergarten is an attention 
school. Its principal mission today is to take 
children at the erratic age of four or five, 
when it is difficult for them to pay attention 
to anything for a long period of time, and by 
means of these various devices, induce the child 
to pay attention to a certain thing for a period 
of proper length. The kindergarten trains a 
child to pay attention. It does this by giving 
him something profitable to do in a way that 
attracts him, because there is a satisfaction in 
letting out this energy through movements of 
the hands. By using devices that appeal to the 
child the kindergartener is recognizing in a 
very intelligent way this great law of 
attention. 

Manual training is another instance of the 
application of this law of attention. I am in- 
clined to think that manual training has been 
misunderstood. So far as any manual training 
school aims primarily to make skilled work- 
men, that is, emphasizing dexterity merely, I 
think it fails to realize its highest possibilities. 
The main purpose of manual training should be 
to associate a feeling of interest in manual 
work that will lead the individual to be 
interested in other kinds of knowledge. 
A boy may not be interested in mathe- 



127 



matics, or he may not like to read any- 
thing except stories. If that boy is put 
into a manual training school, and is in- 
fluenced to make a model of an engine, and 
almost all boys like to make things because 
there is a satisfaction in using the hands, and 
letting out energy through the movements, 
then he might be induced to do something else 
and thereb}^ be led to study subjects that other- 
wise would not interest him. He comes to a 
place where he wants to know how much, then 
he must go to the science of quantity, mathe- 
matics, — he is in a condition to be taught 
mathematics. He wants to know something 
more about the heat problem, then is the time 
for him to be sent to the library for a book to 
receive instruction. So in all manual training 
schools there is a chance to associate with the 
work large ideas of intelligence. I appreciate 
to the fullest extent the possibility of manual 
training. In this way workmen can be made to 
realize the possibilities of the lines of thought 
connected with their tools or machines, and 
they can be influenced to read and think in 
such a way that they will be intelligent and 
enlightened, and will get what we call the 
higher education. 

Now there are two kinds of attention, 
generally spoken of by writers of psychology 



128 



as voluntary and involuntary attention. While 
I do not care very much for a strict nomen- 
clature in this connection, yet I think it con- 
venient to make this distinction. By involun- 
tary attention is meant that in which the feel- 
ing is directly associated, and by voluntary at- 
tention is meant attention in which the feeling 
is remotely associated, but they are both mani- 
festations of the same law. 

As we have had it brought out in the illustra- 
tion, a young child manifests that kind of at- 
tention in w^hich the feeling is directly asso- 
ciated. It is the pleasure associated with the 
bright light that makes the baby pay attention, 
and it is the pleasure attending the game that 
makes the boy give it his attention. 

The primitive man, as we study him in the 
light of progress in history, may be regarded 
as a child in this respect. The savage mani- 
fested this kind of attention. He differed from 
later growth in that he obeyed that law. The 
savage worked when he had a feeling that 
made him do that special piece of work. When 
he had a feeling of hunger, and felt the need 
of food, he w^ent fishing. When his hunger was 
satisfied, he would stop fishing. So in all his 
experiences he did not look very far ahead. He 
fought with his neighbor for food, for shelter, 
and for possession of territory, in order to 



129 



satisfy his immediate desires, — simply because 
he was actuated by a realization of his present 
needs. Experience taught the primitive man 
that he ought to plan ahead, for though his 
immediate need of food might be satisfied, in 
days removed from the present he would have 
a feeling of hunger, so he would imagine that 
feeling, and be influenced by it to do work for 
another day. Just as soon as man began to 
anticipate the future by raising products for 
future needs, and by laying up for a rainy day, 
— just as soon as man began to anticipate 
events removed from the present then civiliza- 
tion began, and in that way civilization went 
on.* 

You will find that the lecturer on sociology 
will point out to you what he calls a force, but 
you will find that it is feeling that has made 
society what it is. It is the need of food 
shelter, and clothing, or it may be fear, super- 
stition, or vanity, and I fear we have not yet 
out-lived that any more than we have out- 
lived other motives that have actuated people 
to do certain things. So you see this law that 
feeling must be associated with anything to 
which we pay attention is far reaching. It 
seems to me that the mistake that is often made 
in the care of children is failure to realize that 
when a child is doing wrong, he is actuated by 

*Ribot 



130 



a wrong feeling. Now what should be the 
proper way of dealing with that child? Why, 
to do as we would be done by. When a person 
gets out of a mood that is associated with a 
certain act then he can easily refrain from the 
act. Why should we not recognize the same 
right on the part of the child? We should 
realize that it is the feeling that we must 
change. We must make the child feel that he 
would like to do something else. The old nurse 
was sensible in this respect. When the boy fell 
down and bumped his head, and would begin 
to cry, she would divert his attention by chang- 
ing his mood so that he would forget his 
grievance. 

We often hear about breaking the will of a 
child. If anything is pernicious, it is that. 
The will is certainly concerned with motive, 
and if people will take care of the motive, they 
will certainly provide for the will. In all in- 
stances of caring for children, whether in the 
family or in the school, let us be sure to realize 
that this is a wide law of human nature, and 
let us be sure to substitute a good motive for a 
bad one. 



131 



XII. 

Voluntary Attention. 

Let us consider now what is commonly called 
voluntary attention. That designation is gen- 
erally applied to those acts which are supposed 
to be done by the power of the will. Whenever 
a person does anything 'that he is not interested 
in, and that he forces himself to do, it is spoken 
of as a case of voluntary attention. If we 
analyze these cases of voluntary attention I 
think we shall find that they all conform to the 
general law of attention that I have announced. 
There is feeling somewhere connected with the 
act. It seems satisfactory to me to say that the 
difference between these kinds of acts which 
we call voluntary and the spontaneous acts 
which we call involuntary depends upon the 
remoteness or nearness of the feeling. We 
shall find, if we consider school work, that 
there are many acts of voluntary attention 
among those parts of the work where we have 
reward or punishment of some kind. A prize, 
mark, or honor of any kind is generally given 
in cases where the subject is not made attrac- 
tive or interesting enough to induce the person 
to pay the required attention. So you see there 
must be connected with the subject or the act 
to be done a feeling, and that feeling is pro- 



132 



vided for by some additional means. Let us 
consider the case of the prize. The person 
wants to get a prize because of the feeling of 
pride or any other phase of satisfaction asso- 
ciated with getting the prize. In order to get the 
prize he must get a certain record or attain to a 
certain rank, in order to get the rank he must 
answer some questions, and in order to answer 
the questions he must study something that 
is unattractive like some phases of mathematics 
or language. In this analysis you observe that 
the feeling is present, but it is remote from the 
act of attention, namely, study. There are all 
these steps between, but still it is feeling that 
secures the attention. That statement is true 
in all cases where artificial means are utilized 
for the purpose of securing attention. It is 
true of giving marks whether in the daily reci- 
tation or in an examniation. Giving marks is 
an attention device. It is a reward or price 
paid to the learner for giving his attention to 
what would not otherwise seem to him worth 
his attention. I think you can at once see the 
objection to such devices. In all school work 
as well as in all kinds of education it is highly 
important to have the motive just as near the 
subject matter as possible. It is im- 
portant to make plain to the learner that the 
subject is worth learning for something imme- 
diately resulting from the subject itself. You 



133 



can see the reasonableness of this. Think of 
hiring a person to read something of Shake- 
speare, Virgil's Aeneid, or Homer's Iliad by 
offering him a prize, or the possibility of high 
rank, or of passing examinations. Just think 
of a school which has to offer for paying atten- 
tion to the masterpieces of art only the motive 
of winning a prize, and a prize that really ap- 
peals to the person's vanity, instead of offering 
as a motive the appreciation that should be 
connected with the act. 

According to this law of attention in all 
educational work the motive if possbile should 
be the result or the advantage of the educa- 
tional experience. The motive should be in- 
herent in the thing done. It is the teacher's 
business to secure attention by making plain 
the worth of the educational experience. Just 
so far as anything degenerates into a task, just 
so far will it fall short of being educational. 
This law makes plain one very important func- 
tion of the teacher, namely, to interest the 
children in the work that is done in the school, 
and to have a good, satisfactory motive for 
doing that which is in the educational course. 
I think that progress has been made on these 
lines more decidedly than on any other. The 
best schools that have come under my observa- 
tion are those where marks, honors, and rank 



134 



are dispensed with. I say that very deliberately 
after careful examination of schools of this 
state. Yet there are some people who think we 
cannot get pupils to pay attention to educa- 
tional subjects unless we hire them to do so. 
It is far more important to have young people 
leave school loving their studies although they 
may not have learned as much as others, than 
to have them leave school hating their studies 
even if they have learned a great deal. Then 
they will have a taste for the best things, and 
their growth and improvement will go on.* 
The motive for continued attention remains, 
whereas in that process where the attention de- 
pends upon rank just as soon as the attainment 
resulting from the offer of a prize or honor has 
been made, then the subject may be cast aside. 
Therefore this subject of voluntary attention 
presents some aspects that are well worth a 
teacher 's consideration. 

If we look into life we shall find that in the 
different phases of work attention is secured 
by feeling, although it may be remotely con- 
nected with the work done. Take the case of 
the professional man. The lawyer searches 
books for uninteresting evidence, not because 
searching is interesting, but because remotely 
connected with that act is something he can do 
that is interesting, and therefore he does that 
disagreeable work. 

*Lubbock 



135 



Here is a man who goes to the uninteresting 
routine of his daily occupation. He does work 
that is unattractive in every respect, yet he 
pays continued attention to that work. He 
must have a motive or feeling. What is it ? He 
has a family. He must provide food and cloth- 
ing for that family. The affection and satisfac- 
tion that make up what we call interest in his 
family are associated with providing a means 
for their support, money, and in order to have 
this he must do service. So in an indirect way 
there is feeling connected with that work. 
That is why he pays attention to it. 

If we analyze those instances where people 
do things that are not attractive in themselves, 
we shall find that they do not do those things 
because they do not like to do them, and be-- 
cause they have formed a deliberate resolution 
to do hard things. Whether work is done for 
one's self, one's family, or the welfare of the 
community there is always the motive that has 
in it the element of interest. I think it is very 
unfortunate to advocate, as some people do, the 
necessity of making children do things that are 
disagreeable, things that are hard, and things 
they do not like to do, just because they don't 
like to do them. I often hear an educator say, 
''The reason why I make a child do that is 
because he doesn't like to do it. I want to 



li6 



train children to do things that are hard." 
Now this is not in accordance with the law of 
life. People do things because they have a 
motive of interest, and I think that children 
should have the same advantage. I believe it is 
the business of the educator to find out what 
interest he can associate with something that 
is disagreeable or hard, and give the young 
person the advantage of it. It is all right to 
have children do difficult things, but I think 
they ought to have the same advantage of 
motive that people have in the general struggle 
for existence. 

People often think it is strange that a boy 

should want to leave the farm. He does not 
have the same condition of interest in his work 
that he might have in other places. The boy 
goes out to work on the farm. He is given a 
stint to do, — mowing or some other kind of 
farm work. There is nothing associated in that 
experience that interests him. How about the 
farmer himself? He is interested. He has a 
feeling connected with the results he is going 
to get. If he is getting in hay he has a feeling 
of what this product is going to mean to him. 
The boy does not have this feeling. He goes 
to the city and if he works at some trade he 
has the prospect of getting up a little higher. 
So in aU educational processes it seems to me 



137 



that we must recognize this great law of nature, 
that in order to have attention we must have 
some feeling either directly or indirectly con- 
nected with the act of attention. If I should 
take up some other illustrations in which it 
seems that people are dong something even 
more uninteresting than I have mentioned I 
think you would still find some feeling re- 
motely connected with the act. 

Higher Intellectual Operations. 

Now I shall pass to some of the mental acts 
that I designate as higher intellectual opera- 
tions, higher than mere observation and image 
getting, higher than merely repeating former 
experiences, for those are the mental processes 
that we have thus far been concerned wdth. I 
would mention classification, reason, generali- 
zation, and abstraction as some of the terms 
applied to the mental acts that I have not thus 
far dealt with at length. We have been con- 
cerned with the process of getting ideas, and 
with the process of memory in repeating those 
ideas in one way or another, in the way we 
call memory, habit, or automatic revival. Now 
it is my purpose to try to present to you a very 
simple aspect of these higher intellectual 
operations. I think there is one aspect of that 
phase that is very definite and clear, and if you 
can appreciate this aspect of mental action I 



138 



think you have something by which you can 
test all of these operations. Let me state this 
truth. The human mind has the power of dis- 
cerning difference or recognizing likeness. 
These statements mean the same thing, because 
of course if an individual can discern differ- 
ence, then he has the power of recognizing 
sameness. When I say that the human mind 
can perform this act I do not attribute to it 
anything more marvelous than when I say the 
mind can form images, and can repeat former 
acts. We do not attempt to tell why a person 
has a mental image, or why the mind can re- 
peat, neither do we pretend to say, when we 
make that statement, why the mind can dis- 
cern difference. This is a fundamental act of 
consciousness. This power is the essence of 
each one of the intellectual operations. Let me 
proceed wdth illustrations to see if I can demon- 
strate that. Let us first consider classification. 
Classification is commonly spoken of as a 
process of putting things together. The mind 
puts together ideas that resemble one another. 
I think among the subjects of science perhaps 
we can find the best illustrations of the act of 
the mind in classifying, although in all its ex- 
periences the mind is classifying. As I stood 
before a cage of eagles the other day at Central 
Park in New York I was reminded of classifica- 



139 



tion in connection with birds. The eagle be- 
longs to an order of birds which includes the 
owl and the hawk, and I might say the falcon 
and vulture which are not so well-known to us 
a^ the others. The human mind has classified 
them into one group because they are alike in 
some respects. They all have a strong, upright 
body, curved beak, and strong, sharp claws. 
If we look at different eagles, different owls, 
and different hawks, we shall find that they are 
all the same in those respects. So classifica- 
tion consists in this instance of recognizing 
likeness, forming a group, and thinking of all 
these birds as a class, ignoring their differ- 
ences, and avoiding many details that might be 
confusing. 

In common life we do the same thing. Very 
early in life a child begins to classify by recog- 
nizing likeness. He puts the parts of the 
furniture into groups. Different as chairs are, 
he puts them together in one group; he does 
the same with tables. He classifies common 
animals, like the dog, the cat, and the horse. 
They differ largely, but there are features of 
sameness which he recognizes, then he makes 
a group, and he thinks by the help of the group. 
This is the meaning of classification. 

I hope this will suggest to you what we mean 
when we say that classification of the higher 



140 



kind is this act of recognizing that individuals 
have certain features that are the same. This 
is one part of knowing. I have emphasized the 
other part of knowing, the part the senses play 
in getting material, and forming images, but 
there is more to it than that. Let me illustrate 
with a very common example. A person meets 
you on the street. The person says, "Don't 
you know me?" What does that person mean? 
He doesn't mean, — ''don't you form a mental 
image?" because if your eyes are open, and if 
you are not blind, you cannot help but form a 
mental image. He means don't you remember 
this image, don't you recall another image, and 
don't you recognize that this is the same as the 
other? 

A child brings to school a natural history ob- 
ject, it may be an insect or a mineral, and he 
asks the teacher what it is. If she says it is 
an insect, she recognizes that it is the same 
class as other insects she has known. If she 
says it is a beetle, she is doing the additional 
act of recognizing that it is the same as another 
specimen that she can remember. If she says, 
"I know that mineral, it is a piece of quartz," 
she is recognizing that it is the same as an- 
other mineral the image of which she can 
faintly revive. So in all processes of knowing 
we must form an image, remember that we 



141 



have previously formed another image, and 
recognize that the particular subject in hand 
is the same as that with which we have had 
former experience. 

This is a very simple phase underlying many 
things that I think psychologists make very 
elaborate. I think it is the essential of what 
they call apperception. The phase of mind ac- 
tion in apperception involves this same power 
of recognizing likeness. 

I have just time to take up one illustration 
of reasoning, so that you may have this to 
think of, as I apprehend that you will want to 
think of these applications in order to really 
appreciate the fullness of their significance, 
otherwise you may fail to realize how far- 
reaching they are. I think in any process of 
reasoning the essence of the mental act is 
recognizing likeness. When a person reasons, 
he recognizes likeness. This sounds simple, and 
yet we often think of reasoning as a very intri- 
cate and hard process. Now I am going to use 
for an illustration one of the best instances of 
reasoning on record. I want to consider with 
you the mental process that Benjamin Franklin 
went through when by reasoning he found out 
this idea, namely, that the cause of lightning 
is electricity. That was one of the greatest and 
most remarkable generalizations that any one 



142 



of our countrymen ever made. He found this 
out, not by observation and memory alone, but 
by this mental act which we call reasoning. 

Franklin had experimented at length with 
electrical apparatus. He had by the use of his 
electrical machine found out a great deal by 
observation. T will refer to one piece of ap- 
paratus which he used. I have here in my 
hand a square piece of glass. On each side of 
the glass there is a piece of sheet lead. This is 
only one of many experiments that Franklin 
made. He charged one piece of metal with 
electricity that he got from a frictional 
machine, then he charged the other piece with 
electricity that he got by induction from the 
earth, so that one piece is charged with one 
kind of electricity, and the other with another 
kind. Then he connected these two pieces of 
metal and he saw a bright spark, and heard a 
snapping sound. So he learned by observation 
that when two pieces of matter charged with 
opposite kinds of electricit}^ are brought near 
each other light and sound are produced. He 
had observed the lightning find the tliuiider. 
and had realized that here was a manifeslMtion 
of light and sound similar to that in his various 
experiments. In the case of the lightning there 
were two masses of matter, two clouds. The 
summary of his observations was that in all 



143 



respects the manifestations were the same. It 
is electricity that produces the light and sound 
in the case of the glass and other phenomena 
that he observed, therefore he reasoned that 
the same was true of the thunder and lightning, 
namely, that they were produced by electricity. 
He gained ever}^ idea from the cloud mani- 
festation just as he had with his apparatus ex- 
cepting the truth that the lightning and the 
thunder were produced by electricity. He 
gained this by reasoning, the essence of which 
was recognizing sameness. Then in the inter- 
esting kite experience lie verified that process. 
He went out into the fields, sent a kite up into 
the clouds, and brought the electricity down, 
and in this way verified his process of 
reasoning. 



144 



XIII. 
MATHEMATICAL REASONING. 

Let us continue the analysis of reasoning by 
taking an example from mathmeatics. Our pur- 
pose will be to show that in mathematical rea- 
soning the process consists essentially in recog- 
nizing likeness among certain ideas. It is a 
peculiarity of mathematical thought that the 
thinker must start with certain truths, as 
axioms, some definitions, and some demands 
that are called postulates. In all reasoning we 
must have our facts to start with, — we must 
have some knowledge. With that preliminary, 
let me go through this process. 

I will use the well-known proposition that 
when two straight lines intersect each other, 
the opposite and vertical angles are equal. In 
the demonstration you remember that the sum 
of two adjacent angles are eciual to the sum of 
two right angles ; then it is pointed out that the 
sum of two other adjacent angles is equal to 
the same. It is obvious that Ave have in this 
statement the same truth as that involved in 
the axiom which states that things equal to the 
same thing are equal to one another. There- 
fore these groups of adjacent angles are equal 
to each other. Again these groups contain one 



145 



angle common to both, and the statement is 
made that one and the same angle can be taken 
from both. Here we have the same truth as 
that in the axiom — if equals be taken from 
equals, the remainders are equal — therefore 
the remaining angles of the group, which are 
vertical angles, are equal. In this process of 
reasoning it is obvious that each step involves 
recognizing sameness. If you should follow all 
geometrical reasoning you would find that this 
is a fair representative of all cases of mathe- 
matical reasoning. 

I want to call your attention to the fact that 
the knowledge we use in this is a little different 
from the knowledge we used in the illustration 
of the last lecture, or from any example of 
physical science. I wish I had time to dwell 
a little longer upon the history of psychology 
on such ideas as these — ideas of axioms, gen- 
eral ideas of mathematics, ideas of space, time, 
and ideas of cause and effect that psychologists 
have contested. They have asked, — Where did 
the individual get these ideas? Some say he is 
endowed with them from birth, that they are 
intuitional, and some say he has gained these 
ideas from experience. The evolutionist modi- 
fies this. The evolutionist says there is a grain 
of truth in both schools, — that all ideas are at- 
tained by the individual by his response to his 



14f 



environment, but these general ideas have been 
attained through eons of time by the race, and 
it has handed down to posterity what it has 
gained. So the individual does come into the 
world endowed with some physical conditions 
for knowing these ideas. 

Reasoning is a classification in the sense that 
it groups according to likeness, but what it 
groups makes it a little different from classi- 
fication as we commonly think of that process. 
Common classification mainly deals with recog- 
nizing likeness among things, whereas reason 
deals with relations. As there are different 
kinds of thinking, and different kinds of 
memory, so there are dift'erent kinds of reason- 
ing according to the relations we are dealing 
with in this process of recognizing likeness. In 
his experiment Franklin dealt with the relation 
of cause and effect in his reasoning. In mathe- 
matics you observe that the relations that we 
are dealing with, are the relations of equality. 
This is true of all mathmatical thought, — same- 
ness in quantity of space or time, and sameness 
in quantitj'- means equality. If a geometrical 
figure occupies the same space as another, then 
we say they are equal to each other, because 
they are the same in that respect. In arithmetic 
the facts that the teacher deals with are facts 
of equality. Two and three, just the same as 



147 



five, that is equals five ; seven minus four, just 
the same as three, that is the remainder equals 
three. The multiplication table is a series of 
facts concerned with equality in connection 
with number. Two threes just the same as, 
that is, equal, six, two fours just the same as 
eight. In algebra the most conspicuous fact 
we can think of is the fact involved in the 
equation. It is the most useful thing in that 
branch of mathematics. The equation is an ex- 
pression of equality. So the relation in mathe- 
matics is a relation of equality: whereas in 
science, in history, in sociology, in the studies 
pertaining to humanity, we are concerned with 
another kind of relation, namely, that between 
cause and effect. 

"We hear a great deal about mental training. 
People think they have said enough when they 
give the general statement, — It is good mental 
training. It depends entirely upon the kind of 
training needed. Let us take an illustration 
from a physical experience. Supposing a per- 
son is trying to learn to play the piano. She 
finds that she must use her fingers very flexibly. 
Suppose a person should say, ''Come over to 
the gymnasium and run around. It is good 
training. It Avill help you play the piano." 
Just because running is good physical training, 
that does not close the argument that it will 



14S 



make the fingers flexible, and therefore 
tribute to the end that the person desires. If a 
person is studying geometry does it follow that 
he is gorog to gain facility in reasoning about 
cause and effect? Supposing a person has 
drilled in repeating the forms of language, does 
it follow that such practice is going to conduce 
in the most effective way to his ability to 
reason about the welfare of humanity, of the 
eommunity or of the state? I hope you see 
that it is necessary for a person engaged in 
educational work to have a clear, definite idea 
about these higher intellectual processes, and 
the statement about mental training does not 
carry conviction with it until we have tested 
it by analysis. So we should train the mental 
processes that will be most useful Just a word 
further about reasoning. I think from my 
analysis it must be obvious to you that reason- 
ing must deal with facts, that in order to rea- 
son a person must have a good stock of data 
and of evidence, that is, of knowledge that is 
of the most worth. So a child in the common 
school would better not be called upon to 
reason much until late in the course, because he 
is then furnished with mental material more 
advantageously. That is why the wisest educa- 
tors have advised that a child would better not 
be called upon to do very much reasoning until 



149 



he is thirteen or fourteen years old. The early 
part of his course would better be concerned 
with other kinds of mental processes, namely, 
those I have dealt with in the early part of 
this course of lectures, — with knowledge 
getting that will be useful. How are we going 
to find out what will be of the most worth? By 
studying life, and by studying what will count 
the most in life. 

Classification is valuable in common school 
education. In our science lessons a child 
sees an experiment in which when heat is 
put into water it is changed to a vapor, and 
when heat is taken out, the vapor becomes a 
cloud or a drop of rain. This is knowledge 
getting. The teacher points out that the same 
thing happens in cloud, in rain, in snow, in 
dew, and in fog. The teacher makes the child 
see that the truth here manifested, is the same 
as the truth in these larger processes. This is 
classification. The truth you have learned 
about the candle flame is the same as that in 
any stove, or in every case of fire whether in 
the burning of a match or the conflagration of 
a city. A child learns by observation that 
when certain substances are rubbed a kind 
of force which will produce motion, and which 
we call electricity, is produced. He identifies 
that with every instance of frictional electric- 



150 



ity. The teacher shows that when a current 
of electricity is sent around a nail it makes a 
magnet of the nail. This truth is the same as 
that of the electric telegraph, the electric hell, 
the trolley car, and many other applications. 
This is simply grouping these various cases 
that are the same in certain respects. Teachers 
should realize therefore what an important 
part in school work classification forms. This 
power to identify many manifestations of the 
truth which we have already acquired is one 
meaning of culture. Knowledge getting, and 
this process of classifying our knowledge are 
two of the important parts of our education 
that should be attended to before the child is 
thirteen or fourteen years old. Then the rea- 
soning process can be carried on far more ad- 
vantageously, for the child will have more re- 
sources to help him at that time. 

Another intellectual operation in which this 
power of recognizing sameness is involved is 
that which we call explanation. Suppose a per- 
son explains a thermometer; what does that 
explanation consist in? He points out that the 
column of liquid mercury, when heated, rises. 
The pupil has seen in a simple experiment that 
when heat is put into a column of water it 
causes the water to expand, that is, it rises. He 
^ees that the same is true here. The teacher 



151 



points out in her explanation that as it is heat 
that causes the water to expand and rise, so it 
is heat that causes the mercury to rise, and the 
pupil observes that both cases are the same. 

In explaining the structure of a piece of 
sandstone the teacher points out that a gutter 
stream may bring down and deposite sand, that 
if we have pressure these particles of sand 
may be compressed, that is, stuck together, and 
if they are heated we know they cohere, as in 
the case of heating bricks and earthen ware. 
She points out that in the past sand was prob- 
ably deposited by water, was compressed, and 
was heated, and we have as a result this 
product, — a piece of sandstone. In this way 
she has pointed out that the same thing that is 
happening in the present, happened in the past, 
and in this way the sandstone was formed. 

I remember a friend of mine telling me that 
he entertained Professor Agassiz when he came 
to this country. One of Agassiz 's earliest ex- 
periences in this country was giving a lecture 
in his town. He was always a very accessible 
man, and always ready to explain things. He 
was famous for determining the kind of fish by 
looking at the scales of the fish. One morning 
a milkman said he wanted to speak to the 
Professor. Agassiz went out, and the milkman 
took from a piece of paper some fish scales, and 



152 



asked the professor if he could tell to what fish 
they belonged. Agassiz looked at the scales, 
and, to the milkman's astonishment, said. 
''They are the scales of a common sucker." 
He did this by the process of recognizing same- 
ness. That had been his specialty. He had had 
experience with a great variety of fishes, and 
those scales were the same as those he had seen 
many times. 

1 want to speak now of what is dealt with in 
psychology as a concept. Suppose we form 
images of trees. We can revive an image of an 
elm tree, of an oak tree, of a pine tree, or a 
poplar tree. Now suppose I leave off the ad- 
jective, and tell you to know tree. If you can 
do this you form a concept. That which is in- 
volved is the sense of sameness without any of 
the differences. You must not image a pine 
tree, an oak tree, or a poplar tree, for the con- 
cept must involve only that which is common 
to all. You can do this by this power of the 
brain to recognize sameness. When the brain 
attempts to produce an idea of trees with- 
out any of the individualism of any par- 
ticular tree it tends first perhaps to produce 
an image of an elm, but this receives a check 
by the pine tree, and this image in turn is 
checked by the poplar, and so on. The result 
of this is the concept. I do not care very much 



133 



for that psychical product. If an individual 
forms a concept of a tree, it is because he has 
had much experience in forming images 
of different kinds of trees. If we take care of 
the separate images, whatever is necessary to 
form a general idea, that psychologists call a 
concept, will be provided for; therefore it is 
the business of the teacher to give ample pro- 
vision for the individual images. 

By the word abstraction we mean taking 
away, or abstracting. It implies the power of 
discerning that which is the same in many 
cases, and dealing with those phases of same- 
ness. The idea of blueness is that idea which 
is taken from a variety of sources, and is con- 
tributed in every case. We recognize it as the 
same, and therefore we abstract it. Whether 
it is the blue gentian, the blue water, or the 
blue sky, whatever may be the substance to 
which it belongs as an attribute the different 
forms are the same in the respect that they all 
possess the attribute blueness. Abstraction 
consists, you see, in dealing with one part of 
the image and ignoring the other parts. Thus 
the abstraction of hardness consists in taking 
one property of quartz, steel, or wood, and 
recognizing that these different entities are the 
same in one respect, namely, they all have the 
power of resistance. That which I am now 



154 



emphasizing is that in this power of abstraction 
we are still recognizing sameness, and abstrac- 
tion depends upon this. 

Let us consider an attribute of a human 
being like goodness or quickness. Our idea of 
goodness has been derived from dealing with 
human individuals, and gaining a knowledge 
of one part of their action which we call good, 
and so far as individuals are the same in that 
attribute of character, so far do they furnish 
us the attribute of goodness, which we consider 
separate from other characteristics. 

I have review^ed some of these processes for 
the purpose of presenting to you a simple way 
of regarding them. I believe it is a useful way 
because I have tested it a great many times. 
The point is this, that the teacher must have a 
very clear, simple, and therefore, useful way of 
looking at the processes by which the human 
mind acts. 



lU 



XIV. 
IIVIAGES AND FEELINGS. 

There is a story told of Sir Walter Scott in 
which Scott says he once saw the poet. Burns, 
at the house of a friend in the city of Edin- 
burgh. Burns was looking at a picture of a 
poor soldier lying dead on the battle-field. On 
one side was a dog resting his head on the 
soldier's body, and on the other side was the 
soldier's poor wife with an infant in her arms. 
Scott says that Burns was very much affected 
by the picture, so much so that he even shed 
tears. I might say here that Scott was only 
about fifteen years old at the time, and was 
proud of the fact that he could tell Burns who 
wrote the lines of poetry under the picture. 

I have given this illustration for the purpose 
of bringing before you this fact, namely, that 
one of the effects of imagery is emotional, that 
is, we have feelings associated with the images. 
Images, feeling, and the idea of association be- 
tween them, is what I want especially to deal 
with, and my purpose today is to direct your 
attention especially to the feeling part of the 
suggestion. 

The word "feeling'' may be applied to a 
large variety of psychical states, including the 



156 



sensations which we have already dealt with 
as a part of knowledge. It may be applied to 
the intellectual phases as well as to the emo- 
tions, which may be regarded as different from 
the intellectual element of psychical experi- 
ences. Mr. Herbert Spencer divides feelings 
into the peripherally or externally initiated 
feelings, mainly the sensations, and the in- 
ternally initiated feelings, or the emotions. I 
shall use the word, feelings, in this lecture, to 
express those internally initiated experiences 
which we ordinarily call emotions. It seems 
to me that this is one of the simplest divisions 
we can use. In the case of this illustration 
you observe that the emotions were directly 
aroused on the part of Bums by these mental 
pictures that he realized. They were the in- 
ternal agents that excited the feelings which 
we call emotions, and which vary from the 
simplest that we might call pleasure or pain, to 
the complex that make up the highest 
character. 

The special point of view that I want to take 
is that of the teacher. What is the teacher's 
interest in emotions? What ought she es- 
pecially to know about them? In the first 
place it may be well to note that emotions con- 
stitute in the main this something which we 
call character. There are different kinds of 



1S7 



character according to the prevailing emotions 
that constitute the variety. As character 
should be the highest object of the teacher in 
her work this emotional element ought cer- 
tainly to receive her attention, as to what it 
means, and how it can be produced. I want 
to be sure to emphasize this idea of association 
implying that emotions depend upon knowl- 
edge, upon mental pictures. All artists recog- 
nize this. It is the ultimate purpose of the 
artist to affect the emotional nature of the one 
for whom he works. Whether that artist be a 
maker of pictures, a composer of music, an 
orator, or a writer of books, his highest pur- 
pose is to affect feeling, and he does this by the 
agent which I have called imagery. We had 
this brought out at the beginning of the lec- 
ture. This typifies the purpose of all picture 
making. 

The composer of music has dealt with sound 
images that are associated, with feelings 
whether these images are grouped simultan- 
eously in harmony, or in succession in melody. 
The orator by all his ways and means generally 
works upon the feelings, especially when he 
depicts the illustrations in an argument. The 
writers of books aim at the same thing, namely, 
causing the reader to have certain mental 
pictures, and by this means producing the far 
higher effect of arousing the sensibilities. 



158 



bringing out the best there is in the world, 
doing what vv^e call inspiring, so that the mental 
nature is aroused. 

I want to say this morning in a very pro- 
nounced way that this is the most imporant 
part of education. I say this especially because 
I have devoted so much time to other parts, 
particularly to knowledge getting, but knowl- 
edge getting in itself is not the most valuable 
feature in a person's growth. I have dealt 
with certain activities which are machine-like 
in which we do away with conscious action as 
much as possible, and I feared that you would 
go away thinking that these were the most im- 
portant parts of education. The psychical 
truths of memory, habit, and reflex action are 
important as they refer to indispensable work 
that we must do, but beyond all this is the 
work of affecting the emotions, the material 
that makes up the very highest thing in the 
world, namely, human character. 

The teacher is concerned with the feelings in 
that she is concerned with affecting the nature 
of the individual. So far as we are concerned 
with feeling we aim at changing, or affecting 
the mood. If we can only put a person in a 
proper attitude, so far as his feelings are con- 
cerned, to life, and to human beings, this is the 
highest thing we can do. People are often 



159 



pnzzled with life because they are concerned 
with the objective side, they are dealing with 
the outside. They make the mistake of think- 
ing it is necessary to change outward, material 
things. The great lesson we have to learn in 
this connection is that the individual must be 
adapted to the possibilities of the environment, 
and this is a work the public schools may ac- 
complish. 

Again the feelings not only constitute the 
nature of the individual by which he is adapted 
to his environment, but they are the motive 
power of the individual. Whatever is done is 
done largely because of the soul, devotion, en- 
thusiasm, or spirit of some kind in the 
individual. Therefore if we wish to help 
people to higher and better living, that part of 
their activity we must be concerned with 
especially is the feeling. This old saying comes 
into my mind: Knowledge is power. I think 
more of that now than I used to, because I am 
interpreting it in this way. If we enable the 
individual to get knowledge that is of the most 
worth, the kind of knowledge that produces 
the highest motives and the best feelings, just 
so far as these ideas that we call knowledge 
are fraught with the noblest emotions, just so 
far is the possession of such knowledge valu- 
able to the individual. The teacher should in- 



160 



terpret knowledge in this way, because this 
will make her ambitious to study and pick out 
that knowledge that will be of the most worth. 
De Quincy, in one of his essays, gave utter- 
ance to these Avords: ''There is a literature 
of knowledge, and a literature of power. ' ' This 
has been quoted a great many times. If 
De Quincy meant to make a decided distinction 
between these two ideas of literature it seems 
to me that he may be misleading. Perhaps it is 
better to say that the power resulting from 
some kinds of knowledge is greater and 
possibly more uplifting than that resulting 
from other kinds. In all cases of power we 
should probably find by analysis what may be 
regarded as knowledge, but of course we must 
be sure to realize that even a product of the 
imagination may be classified as knowledge, as 
it includes the image which we have regarded 
as the unit of knowledge. De Quincy refers 
to Milton as having produced this power by 
imagery. It was by that unit of knowledge, the 
image, that he obtained his results. 

Now in dealing with feeling a teacher must 
rely upon two ways. In the first place she can 
affect the emotional nature, that is, the char- 
acter of her pupils by her personality. Before 
I proceed to that let me tell you something 
that I have almost forgotten. T was once talk- 



161 



ing to a champion oarsman, a man who had 
never lost a race, and yet if you had looked at 
his physique, you would not have thought this 
likely. He was concerned with training young 
men in college. He told me that he put very 
much more dependence upon the character of 
the young man than people would think. He 
said it was the spirit, the self-sacrificing ele- 
ment, and especially the honesty of the in- 
dividual that he counted upon most. I could 
realize that, for I had known that man from a 
boy, and he was ever noted for his honesty of 
purpose and reliability, I could feel that when- 
ever he was in a contest he devoted himself 
wholly to the work at hand, and that counted 
a great deal. So the teacher must realize that 
her honesty of purpose, her devotion, her in- 
terest in the subject, and her spirit of helpful- 
ness will have their results in her work. I 
think nothing can take the place of the in- 
dividual. Powerful as the printed page may 
be, it never can take the place of the possibility 
of the living person who is really in earnest, 
and has the feeling element in her make-up. 

Why was Robert Burns been so influential 
as a writer? He was unlettered, he did not 
have a liberal education, he did not have the 
advantages of a University course, yet he lives 
in the minds and affections of the whole world. 



162 



and though literature itself may change, still 
Robert Burns is appreciated and loved by those 
who appreciate poetry. The reason is this, as 
Carlyle says, — Burns was sincere. He was 
sincere in his feelings. In his experience there 
were no superficial sentimentalities. He dealt 
with lowly life and with nature with so much 
sincere feeling that he influenced the whole 
world by his poetry. 

If you contemplate any great piece of ora- 
tory like the speech of Abraham Lincoln at 
Gettysburg, or Patrick Henry before the Vir- 
ginia Assembly or the speech of Wendell 
Philips in Fanuiel Hall when he was only about 
twenty-four years old, you will find that it was 
the temperament of the orator that affected the 
people. 

Now I want to speak of the possible use of 
books. This is my last point, and it is one J 
want to make plain and enforce if possible. I 
think that the teacher must realize that affect 
ing the character is the highest possibility oJ 
reading in the school. When we say that read- 
ing is most important we are thinking of this. 
If we can only teach the child to read we may 
change his feelings, and we may so guide him 
in that part of his nature as to determine his 
character. I do not know of any instrument 
that is more potent than the book, because the 



163 



book is the embodiment of the noblest souls 
that ever lived. Writers have left a record of 
their ideas, and their feelings, and we have the 
very best ideas to use in affecting the character 
of the individual we are dealing with. This 
has been the purpose of all writers. If we con- 
sider the Greek literature, beginning with 
Homer and coming down through the different 
periods we find that books are full of imagery 
associated with feelings. We find that they 
portrayed human beings like ourselves, and 
their relations to the home and to the com- 
munity. If we recognize that they associated 
ideas with feelings then we know how we 
should use this literature. 

This is also true of Hebrew literature. One 
of the most striking things is that the psalmists 
have used images and have associated with 
them feelings. Take any psalm, — "The Lord 
is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh 
me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth 
me besides the still waters. ' ' How is the effect 
in that psalm produced? By the way in which' 
the poet has used images for the purpose of 
affecting the emotions. 

The sagacity of the Great Teacher of 
Nazareth in this respect is very striking. All 
through his teachings he used imagery for 
arousing feeling. I have counted ten instances 



164 



in which he used the imagination for producing 
the right attitude in regard to the Kingdom of 
Heaven. When he was confronted by the 
lawyer with the question, ''Who is my neigh- 
bor?" he was not led into the difficulties of 
defining and analyzing. But he immediately 
proceeded to picture a man among thieves, 
robbed, abused and wounded, left by the way- 
side, two persons indifferently passing by, the 
third helping in every humane way possible. 
Then the Teacher asks, "Who was the neigh- 
bor ? ' ' And then the prompt answer, ' * He that 
showed mercy" was evidence that the imagery 
had accomplished its purpose not only in con- 
viction of intellect but in terms of feeling. 

Macaulay in his essay on Milton says that 
philosophers may deal with abstractions, but 
the people need images. It is striking to see 
how^ this truth of humanity has been adhered 
to. The highest lessons of the human race have 
been learned in this way. 

Before I close I want to call your attention 
to the fact that our highest ideals have been 
the result of growth. It seems to me that the 
very highest feelings have been produced in 
the latter part of human evolution, although 
when I say the latter part we must go back and 
include the high ideals of many hundreds of 
years. There is that writer who said, ' ' Charity 



165 



suff ereth long, and is kind. ' ' 1 cannot think of 
anything higher than that. It seems to me 
this is the culmination of the possibility of 
human character. It is wonderful to see how 
the early writers caught the secret of these 
highest possibilities. The teacher ought to 
recognize the fact that we have grown in our 
ideals, and that the modern writers differ in 
these respects from the writers of Greece. 
Therefore we find in modern literature some- 
thing that can be adapted to modern educa- 
tion. 

I wuU give one illustration to bring out what 
I mean when I say we have toda}^ ideals that 
are the highest in human history. I will intro- 
duce my illustration by saying that the writer 
pictures a small boy as having been left on the 
coast of England in the midst of a raging snow 
storm. The men who had brought him there 
pushed off from the shore in their boat, and 
left him alone. He clambered up a cliff, found 
his way over a deserted country, and at length 
came to a forest. He heard a cry, and he ap- 
proached in the direction whence the sound 
came. The following is the selection I will use 
as an illustration : 

*"Let us explain at once. On the plains over 
which the deserted boy was passing in his 
turn, a beggar woman nursing her infant and 

*Hugo 



166 



searching for a refuge had lost her way a few 
hours before. Benumbed with cold she had 
sunk under the tempest, and could not rise 
again. The falling snow had covered her. So 
long as she was able she had clasped her little 
girl to her bosom, and thus died. 

The deserted child had heard the cry of the 
dying child. He disinterred it. He took it in 
his arms. When she felt herself in his arms 
she ceased crying. The faces of the two 
children touched each other, and the purple 
lips of the infant sought the cheek of the boy 
as it had been a breast. The little girl had 
nearly reached the moment when the congealed 
blood stops the action of the heart. Her 
mother had touched her with the chill of her 
own death; a corpse communicates death; its 
numbness is infectious. Her feet, hands, arms, 
knees, seemed paralyzed by cold. The boy felt 
the terrible chill. He had on him a garment 
dry and warm. — his pilot jacket. He placed 
the infant on the breast of the corpse, took off 
his jacket, wrapped the infant in it, took it up 
again in his arms, and now. almost naked, 
under the blast of the north wind which 
covered him with eddies of snow-flakes, carry- 
ing the infant, he pursued his journey. 

The little one having succeeded in finding 
the boy's cheek, again applied hei* lips to it, 



167 



m 24 1913 

and, soothed by the warmth, she slept. First 
kiss of those two souls in the darkness. 

The mother lay there, her back to the snow, 
her face to the night ; but perhaps at the 
moment when the little boy stripped himself 
to clothe the little girl, the mother saw him 
from the depths of infinity. ' ' 

The purpose of the writer is to make us see 
these images that are associated with ideal 
feeling, and we are made better for having had 
this emotion. The artist has produced this emo- 
tion in such an inimitable way by means of 
imagery. He has tried to make plain to us the 
possibility of human action. He tries to have 
us imagine how it is possible for one human 
being, as small as that little boy is represented 
to be, to act toward another, and the respond- 
ing effect we have, as we read, is our glimpse 
of possible goodness in the human race. This 
is the end and possibility of any good book, 
and the greatest opportunity of the teacher is 
that presented in making the individual have 
just such experiences as this, producing a feel- 
ing that will overcome evil with good. 



168 



